Student assignments can be viewed without needing to download them, using a feature called Annotate that displays multiple types of files on screen.

Once the student submits the assignment and it's time to review, you can view and grade their submission online by adding comments, notes, and a grade. And this works with many file types: Word (DOC, DOCX), PowerPoint (PPT, PPTX), Excel (XLS, XLSX), PDF, image, video... Here you can consult the full list.

If the student's submission contains other types of files, they will need to be downloaded to be viewed.

You can access grading an assignment through several paths, such as the activity stream, the gradebook, or the assignment you are going to grade and then Submissions.

Our favorite way is from Gradebook > Pending Assignments, by clicking the Grade (x) button corresponding to the assignment you are about to start grading. This will open the flexible grading panel.

We will focus on Annotate here, leaving the grading options and panel navigation for the article about the flexible grading interface.

You can navigate through the document, which has been converted to PDF, using the icons on the left side of the Annotate toolbar.

The right side contains tools such as a pencil for drawing on the PDF, images and stamps to add to the correction, text comments, and arrows, lines, and polygons. Additionally, you can print, download, and search within the document.

Simply click on the tool, select the options, and draw on the PDF.

You can save comments you use repeatedly in the library, then easily reuse them by simply clicking on them.