At the start of some articles, we sometimes indicate that the article is relevant depending on whether you are using tasks or legacy courses. There may be two versions of the article and to make sure you get the right information you need to know if you are working with a legacy or task course. For many of our articles, it won't matter so unless you see a specific reference at the top you can continue to read on.

In short, a task course has all tasks (assessed and non-assessed) in line and provides a more flexible and wider variety of assessment options. Legacy courses are a deprecated precursor to tasks courses and can no longer be created (but you may still find some “out in the wild”). Legacy assessments are not in line with the rest of the course content and cannot be edited after the course has been published.

Legacy
In a legacy course, there are three main types of assessment that need to be marked by facilitators. Open response, file upload and video.

Legacy courses also have auto-marked quizzes which need to be created with a spreadsheet.

There are also four types of non-assessed activity types used in legacy courses. They are multiple choice, open response, fill in the blanks (cloze) and submit task activities.

Tasks

Unlike in a legacy course, tasks (assessed and non-assessed and quizzes) are in-line, i.e. they’re added within the course content, not in their own sections. There are over 20 task types available from multiple choice, fill in the blanks, matching and much more. We also have a Task variations feature, where authors can add variations to a task so learners get allocated one of those variations at random when they first visit the page. Tasks can be reused and edited throughout your course saving you time and giving you increased flexibility. You can read more about each of the different task options in our Task types article. Unlike legacy assessments with tasks you can choose to have them auto marked or marked by a facilitator. Our article An introduction to tasks explains these features more in depth.
​

If you're in a legacy course you'll see a button giving you the option to switch to using new tasks. If you're already in a tasks course, this button won't be there.

You will also see that you have Assessment items and Assessment description in your build menu.

Legacy courses show an assessment tab on the activation screen. Tasks courses do not.

In legacy courses you will generally see an Assessment button on the side navigation menu (unless there are no assessments). Tasks courses have a Tasks button instead.
​
Tasks courses also have a Class Console button. Legacy courses have a Class button instead.

Other articles you may find useful:
​Introducing tasks
​
​
​