About assignments

Updated 21 May 2024

Students do most of the activities and assessments in your course in the student player. The player checks students' answers and reports the results to you and your students.

The player is HTML5-based and runs on tablets, laptops, and desktop systems. Using the player on smartphones may not provide the best experience.

For activities and homework, students have access to tutorial question help unless you disallow it.

After a period of inactivity on activities or homework, the player saves the student's work and ends the session. The period of inactivity is not included in the amount of time the student worked.

Students can use the JAWS screen reader to answer multiple-choice and free-response questions, but graphing and essay questions are not yet supported. Students can cut, copy, and paste using keyboard shortcuts; they also can use the command-line language to enter special characters and symbols. The student online provides details on using the player with JAWS.

Complete information on using the player is included in the student help .

Students can work in the player on their tablets, with certain limitations:

  • Locked-down tests must be done on a computer.
  • Flash-based media must be viewed on a computer.
  • Some questions are not yet screen-reader accessible. Accessible questions are identified with a screen reader icon Ear icon indicating that a question is screen reader accessible in the assignment wizard.

When students use the player for activities, homework, or Extra Practice, they can select Get more help to open get question help ("learning aids"). The type of help available depends on the question. Question help is not available for assessments, tests, or quizzes unless you add it.

You can:

  • Use course settings to choose what types of question help are available in your course.
  • Use assignment settings to select the question help available for an individual assignment.
  • View assignment details to edit to question help available for one or more questions in an assignment. (Question-level customizations are not available in MyLab Student Success.)

Any type of question help disabled at the course level is not available for an individual assignment or question.

You cannot change settings for an assignment that students have already worked on.