How to Assign Homework Online (With Deadlines and Auto-Grading)

Collecting 30 notebooks, marking them on Sunday night, then remembering who still owes you work on Monday morning. If that sounds familiar, assigning homework online gives you a good chunk of your week back. Here's how to do it, from setting up a class to having a gradebook.

Quick answer: Create a class, share one invite link with your students, pick a quiz, and set when it opens and when it's due. Students work on a phone or laptop and get a score the moment they submit. You see who hasn't done it and which questions tripped everyone up, all on one page.

When online homework works best

Online homework shines for multiple-choice, short-answer and practice sets after each lesson. Grading is instant, so students see their mistakes while the lesson is still fresh. Long written answers and worked solutions still belong on paper; use online homework for the practice that goes alongside.

There's one benefit people rarely mention: you see which question the whole class got wrong. That is the clearest hint for what to reteach.

Step 1: Create a class and invite students

In rayQuiz, go to Classes, press New class and name it. On the class page, press Invite students. You can:

• Copy the invite link and post it in your class group chat (the fastest option).
• Send email invitations one by one.
• Import a roster to add everyone at once.

Students open the link, sign in and they're in. You do this once per school year.

Step 2: Prepare the quiz

You have three options:

1. Write it in the editor. Each question starts with "Question 1:" and the correct option gets a *.
2. Import a Word document you already have, tables, images and formulas included.
3. Draft it with AI from a short description or an attached lesson plan, then review and edit.

Homework doesn't need to be long. 10 to 15 questions, about 15 to 20 minutes, is enough to build a habit without burning students out.

Step 3: Assign it with an open time and a due time

Open Assignments, pick the quiz and the class, then set opens at and due at. A few tips:

• Make it due at 9 pm, not 11:59 pm. Students don't leave it until midnight, and you get results sooner.
• Open it right after class, while the lesson is still fresh.
• Use a proctored exam for high-stakes tests instead of homework: it adds question and answer shuffling and locks the attempt when a student switches tabs.
• Decide whether students see answers after submitting. For practice, yes, so they can fix their mistakes. For graded work, wait until after the deadline.

Step 4: Track and nudge

The assignment page shows who has submitted, who hasn't, and each student's score. No chasing anyone in the hallway. Before the deadline, rayQuiz can email a reminder to students who haven't started (students choose whether they receive it in their notification settings).

Step 5: Review results and export grades

After the deadline, open the class statistics to see:

• The average score and how scores are spread.
• The most-missed questions. Spend the first five minutes of the next lesson on those.
• Each student's results, so you know who needs extra help.

Need to hand in grades? Export to Excel instead of retyping them.

What a week of online homework looks like

• Monday: after class, assign 10 review questions, due Wednesday evening.
• Thursday: open class by going over the three most-missed questions.
• Friday: assign a short mixed review for the weekend, due Sunday evening.

That's about 15 minutes at your computer each week instead of a stack of notebooks.

FAQ

Can students without a laptop do it? Yes. Students work in the browser on their phone; there's no app to install.

Is it free? Students never pay to take quizzes, and teachers can write quizzes for free. Classes and class assignments are part of the Premium plan for teachers. See rayQuiz for teachers.

Can I assign one quiz to several classes? Yes. When you assign it, tick one or more classes at once, and reuse the quiz as often as you like.

Want screenshots of each step? Read the guide to classes and assignments, or start with the free quiz maker.