I don't know about you but my holiday ends in two weeks, before then I will manage a weekend surfing in Norway but apart from that I'll be at home preparing new resources for the website and doing some bouldering. I also have to prepare the assignments for my own students via student access, I have already done this for my first years so thought I would share the way I did it. I assume you know how to set up groups in student access, if not you can find out here Student access - groups. Once you've done that you can assign tasks, this is outlined here Student access - assignments but there are some short cuts.

• I want my students to have access to all the student pages but not the tests so I select all pages but then go through and unselect all tests. The reason these are not automatically hidden is that you may want to share the answers after a test.

• To add tasks the group needs some members so I add the fake student Isaac Newton to the group. Having a fake student is very useful when trying things out. To do this you simply use the code supplied when you click "invite students".

I want to add all the tasks for the first unit which is mechanics. The course is basically activities followed by a multiple choice quizzes. The activities contain links to other pages, problems, practicals and extension work. These are already available to students but I only want to track their progress through the activity pages and record their scores in quizzes so will only set the activities and quizzes as tasks.

• First add the activities, these are listed in order under "online course" in reading tasks.

• Now add the quizzes, these are listed in the correct order under quizzes.

• Next you have to put them in order so quiz follows activity.

Now you are ready to go, all you need to do is add your students. To do this send them the link.

Note: There are a couple of uncomfortable issues you need to be aware of:

• Once you have sent the tasks to your students you can't re-order them so if you add a new one it simply appears at the end. The only way to re-order is to delete them all and start again. This is a bit of a pain but is being addressed.
• If you save as draft rather than sending to students your order will be lost so don't do this.