What do I need to know about ORAs?
An open response assessment (ORA for short) is an assessment type that allows you to submit:
- written essays
- file attachments such as a PDF or image (read more: Submit a file with an ORA response)
- links to work outside of edX.org (such as a lab notebook)
When you submit a response to an ORA, your submission may be reviewed and graded by:
- yourself! This is called the assess your response step.
- your peers in the course. This is called the assess peers step. You will be required to review your peers' submissions, and you might have to wait a while for a grade from your peers.
- your instructors. This is called the staff grade step. You might have to wait a while for a grade from course staff.
The required review steps may be any combination of self assessment, peer assessment, or staff grades. There may also be a training step to guide you through how to submit.
ORAs have fixed due dates
Open response assessments have due dates fixed by the course team. Each step has its own due date. These due dates are not flexible. The due date is displayed next to the title of each step as due Month Day, Year 24-hour Datetime with a countdown in parentheses.
For example, due Jun 14, 2021 23:59 EDT means the submission is due June 14, 2021 at 11:59pm Eastern Daylight Time.
The due date is set in UTC by default, but you can ensure it's showing in your local timezone by updating your Site Preferences.
Can I preview or practice an ORA?
You can enroll in the DemoX course to preview and practice a peer-reviewed open response assessment in the Optional: Example Problem Types module.
For details on how to work with open response assessments, see: