Assignments that you add to Schooltraq undergo a (hopefully short) life, from their creation to their eventual deletion or archival. Here are the three states of an assignment:

• Open assignment: When you first add an assignment to Schooltraq, it is considered “open”. Open assignments are those that are still on your plate and that you must do. They can be overdue, and they’ll show up on your Dashboard at the top.
• Complete/done assignment: Complete assignments are those that you mark as “done”. Completed assignments are analogous to crossed-off items on a to-do list. It is helpful to display these as an indicator of your progress, so completed assignments show up on your Dashboard near the bottom.
• Archived assignment: When you no longer want to see an assignment, you can archive it. Archived assignments disappear from your Dashboard and are available on the All assignments page. Archived assignments are analogous to items on an old to-do list that you might keep around for reference but really don’t have a need for anymore. If you use Google’s Gmail product, you’ll be pleased to know that archived assignments work the same way as archived mail.

Of course, you can always delete an assignment entirely if you like. Deleted assignments go away from our system; you cannot undo a deletion. If you want to keep an assignment for reference, you should consider archiving it.

Completing assignments is like crossing items off a to-do list

It is beneficial, according to research, to show action items even when they are completed. Not only is there a log and a record, but a feeling of success and completion is also evoked when users mark assignments as completed, the same way you might feel motivated when you cross off an item from a to-do list.

Most of our users find the completed assignment state very helpful. They begin their homework session with their assignments open, and end with most or all of their assignments complete. Most users also archive assignments after time has passed, serving as a record of their course history.

If you don’t want to mark your assignments as completed and/or archived, you can keep things simple by directly archiving or deleting assignments as you go. The dropdown menu next to the “Complete” checkmark button provides options for archiving or deleting assignments.

Bulk archiving assignments

If you’d like to archive more than one assignment at a time (say, if you wanted to clear out your completed assignments for the evening), you can use the “bulk archive” functionality. On your Dashboard, in between your open and completed assignments to the right, click the “Bulk Archive” button to open a popup window.

You can opt to archive all your completed assignments (the default action), or you can use the alternate options to archive open assignments, or all assignments on your Dashboard.