Writing assessment options

Updated 04 Sep 2025

Your course content may include any or all of the three Revel writing assessment options. Each has a different purpose:

  • Journals display a prompt related to a reading or activity that students just completed. Reflecting on what they've read in a low-stakes journal entry can help students retain and synthesize course content. After submitting, students can review but not change their own entry, and can't see other student's entries.

    Journal entries earn no points by default though you can change their point value if you want.

    After students submit journal entries, you can see all entries and a list of students who didn't submit an entry. However, you can't comment on entries, change journal scores, or share entries with other students.

    See Review journal submissions.

  • Shared writing also displays a writing prompt, with student responses appearing in an online discussion visible to both you and other students.

    Share writing assessments earn 20 points by default, and you can change their point value until students start work. After students submit a response, they can see their own, other students', and instructor responses, and can continue submitting posts until the assessment is due. Students receive points only for their first submission.

    You can review student posts and add comments or feedback to a shared writing discussion. You can hide posts that you feel are unhelpful or posted by mistake.

    If shared writing assessments earn points in your course, you can also change a student's score for a shared writing post.

    See View and respond to shared writing posts.

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  • Writing assignment assessments let you assess students' critical thinking and writing ability in a longer format. Your course materials may include one or more prompts, and may also allow you to create your own prompts.

    If you assign a prompt that came with your course materials, you have two options for autograding: to use standard auto-grading; or to use artificially intelligent grading based on 20 responses for a given prompt that you graded manually. These options are available only for prompts that come with your course materials; you must manually grade any writing prompts you create.

    Before assigning a writing assignment assessment, you set up feedback and scoring options to suit your needs. For example, you can allow one or more drafts, request a complete rewrite, and choose or create a grading rubric. These options appear when you edit writing assignment options, either before or after you add it to an assignment.

    See View and grade writing assignment submissions.