LifterLMS Assignments: When Quizzes Are Not Enough

A quiz can tell you whether a student recognizes the right answer. It cannot tell you whether they can write the proposal, record the pitch, or finish the five steps you just taught.

That gap is what assignments are for. In LifterLMS they are not part of the free core plugin. They come from a paid add-on called LifterLMS Assignments.

This guide explains what the add-on adds, how the grading workflow runs, how to choose between an assignment and a quiz, and what your options are if you would rather not buy it. Details about the add-on follow its official documentation at the time of writing.

What the Assignments add-on adds

With the add-on active, a lesson can carry an assignment in the same way it can carry a quiz. A lesson may have a quiz, an assignment, or both.

The add-on is sold on its own and is also part of the Infinity Bundle, the largest of the three LifterLMS bundles. It is not included in the smaller bundles, so check before you plan a course around it. Our comparison of LifterLMS free vs paid covers how the bundles differ.

Installation follows the usual route for LifterLMS add-ons: add your license key, then install and activate LifterLMS Assignments from LifterLMS > Add-ons & more. The getting started guide lists the current requirements.

The three assignment types

Type	What the student does	How it is graded	Good for
Task List	Works through a checklist of tasks you wrote and ticks them off	No review. Per the grading documentation, an unfinished list counts as 0 percent and a finished one as 100 percent	Setup steps, practice routines, fieldwork, anything done away from the screen
Essay	Writes a long-form answer on the assignment screen	An instructor reads it, leaves remarks, and enters a percentage grade	Reflection, analysis, written plans, short reports
Upload	Submits a file	An instructor opens the file, leaves remarks, and enters a percentage grade	Documents, designs, spreadsheets, audio or video of a performance

Each type has a few options of its own. An essay can have a minimum and a maximum word count. An upload can carry written instructions and can be limited to the file types you allow.

According to the documentation, uploaded files are protected: only the student who submitted a file and the instructor reviewing it can open it.

Add an assignment to a lesson

1. Go to Courses, hover over the course, and click Builder.
2. On the lesson, click the assignment icon.
3. Click Create New Assignment. To reuse one you built for another lesson, click Add Existing Assignment.
4. Choose the assignment type and give it a title.
5. Fill in the details for that type: the tasks for a Task List, word limits for an Essay, or instructions and allowed file types for an Upload.
6. Publish the assignment with its toggle, then click Save changes.

Then open the lesson's own settings. Once a lesson has an assignment, a switch called Require Passing Grade on Assignment appears. When it is on, the student has to pass the assignment before the lesson can be completed.

That switch decides how strict the assignment is. For a Task List it means "finish the list". For an Essay or Upload it means the student waits for a person, which brings us to the workflow.

The grading and feedback workflow

Submissions that need a human land in a reporting tab the add-on creates.

1. Go to LifterLMS > Reporting and open the Assignments tab.
2. Click an assignment's title to see an overview of its submissions.
3. Open the Submissions tab. Submissions waiting for review are shown in bold.
4. Click the ID of a submission to open it.
5. Click Start a Review.
6. Write your feedback in the remarks box and enter the grade as a percentage.
7. Click Save Review.

Students find the result under My Grades on the Student Dashboard, where a review link opens your comments. They can also be notified when an assignment has been graded, if you have that notification switched on. The grading and reviewing guide shows each screen.

The software is the easy part of this workflow. The harder part is yours:

• Turnaround. If a pass is required, every ungraded essay is a student who cannot continue. Decide how quickly you will review and say so on the course page.
• Who grades. One instructor reviewing every submission stops working at a certain enrollment. Plan who else gets access to the reporting screens.
• A rubric. A percentage with no criteria invites arguments. Write three or four criteria into the assignment instructions and grade against them.
• What a fail means. Tell students in the instructions what happens if the work is not good enough, and test that path with a test student before launch.

How assignments affect grades

A lesson's grade comes from what is attached to it. With only an assignment, the lesson grade is the assignment grade. With a quiz and an assignment, the two are combined.

The LifterLMS grading documentation describes two weights for that case, Quiz Weight and Assignment Weight, both starting at 1. Left alone, each counts for half of the lesson. Setting one of them to 0 removes it from the grade, which is how you keep a practice quiz from pulling down a graded project.

Lessons then roll up into the course grade according to each lesson's Lesson Weight. If the capstone project should count for more than the weekly exercises, raise the weight on its lesson.

Assignment or quiz?

You want to check that a student can	Use	Why
Recall facts or terms	Quiz	Graded instantly, repeatable, no instructor time
Choose correctly between options	Quiz	Multiple choice and true or false are built for this
Follow a procedure offline	Task List assignment	The checklist is both the instruction and the record
Explain or argue something in their own words	Essay assignment	There is no single correct answer to mark automatically
Produce a piece of work	Upload assignment	You need to see the work itself
Show understanding and apply it	Both, on one lesson	The quiz checks the idea, the assignment checks the practice

The cost is the real dividing line. A quiz costs you time once, when you write it. An essay or upload costs you time for every student, for as long as the course runs. Use reviewed assignments where a person's judgment is the point, and quizzes everywhere else. Our tutorial on creating quizzes in LifterLMS covers that side in detail.

Alternatives without the add-on

You have options if the add-on is not in your budget, though each one gives something up.

• An honor-system lesson. Put the task in the lesson content and let students click Mark Complete when they have done it. It costs nothing and proves nothing. It is fine for practice, not for anything you certify.
• A form inside the lesson. A form plugin can collect text and file uploads. The entries live in the form plugin, not in LifterLMS, so they are not connected to lesson completion, grades, or the Student Dashboard unless something is built to connect them.
• Email or a shared folder. Workable for a small cohort. You can mark a lesson complete for a student from the reporting screens, but nothing stops that student from clicking Mark Complete first.
• Written questions inside a quiz. The Advanced Quizzes add-on adds Long Answer and File Upload question types that an instructor reviews. It is also a paid add-on, so this is an alternative route, not a free one. It suits short written answers mixed into a test better than a standalone project.
• A live session. For skills you have to watch, a call may be the honest assessment. Mark the lesson complete afterward.

None of the free routes can hold a student at a lesson until a person has approved their work. If that gate matters, you need the add-on or custom development.

What to do next

List the three or four moments in your course where a student has to do something, not just know something. Match each one to a type from the tables above, estimate the review time per student, and decide whether you can sustain it.

Then build one assignment and take it as a test student from submission to graded result. Check what the student sees while waiting.

Professional help earns its cost when the standard workflow does not fit: several reviewers with their own queues, peer review, rubric scoring, or submissions sent on to another system. Our LifterLMS plugin development service builds that kind of extension, and LifterLMS consulting can help you decide whether you need it at all. You can also send us your course outline and ask.