Assignments: Best Practices
Make sure your assignment has a grading category or it won't appear in the gradebook. You can select the grading category or create a new one when you are creating or editing the assignment. You can also create grading categories under Grade Setup in the left-hand course navigation.
Disable comments. Students often believe they type their assignment
submission in the comments area, especially for journal assignments.
Avoid the confusion by disabling comments for the assignment.
Assign a due date. This will add the assignment to the course
calendar and students will see it in the "Upcoming" section in
Schoology. Due dates will also aid in sorting your gradebook
chronologically.
Disable submissions or lock the assignment rather than unpublishing it. When you unpublish an assignment it disappears from the gradebook and is no longer included in grade calculations. If you don't want students to be able to submit work before or after a certain date, either disable submissions or lock the assignment. The latter allows you to lock the assignment on a specific date, so if you don't want to accept late work, that's your best bet.
Never tick the box to make the assignment a midterm or final, even if it is a midterm or final. This setting is for K-12 schools with multiple grading periods for the same class.