Hand in an assignmentas one link

When the upload box says “file too large”

Learning platforms cap uploads, and the cap is set by your institution rather than by the software — which is why the number differs between two courses on the same campus. In practice, per-file limits in the 20–250 MB range are typical, and some departments set them far lower to protect storage. Email is worse: Gmail stops at 25 MB for an attachment and Outlook's default is smaller still.

A 12-minute screen recording at 1080p is routinely over any of those. So is a scanned portfolio, a dataset with images, or a Unity build. The moment your work stops being a text document, the submission box stops being able to hold it.

A link sidesteps the whole category of problem because what you paste is text. Twelve characters of URL go into a box that would have rejected 900 MB of video. Your file lives at our end and the marker streams it from their browser.

• Free covers 100 MB of storage in total — a single file can use all of it — across up to 20 links. That is fine for documents and slides; video coursework will use it up fast.
• Pro raises the per-file ceiling to 200 MB, which covers most student video work at 1080p.
• A multi-file album holds up to 500 MB in total, so a report plus a dataset plus a demo fits in one link.
• Video that is still too big: export at 1080p rather than 4K and use H.264. A 10-minute screen recording drops from gigabytes to tens of megabytes with no loss a marker will ever notice.

One link for a submission with many parts

Most real coursework is not one file. It is a report, the data behind it, the code that produced it, and often a recording of the thing working. Sent as four attachments, a marker has to download them all, work out which is which, and reassemble your argument from a downloads folder.

As one album link they open in order, in the browser, with the names you gave them. The PDF renders in a viewer, the CSV renders as a table, the video plays without downloading first, and the ZIP is there to grab if they want the code. Your submission arrives as a thing to read rather than a pile to sort.

It also removes a specific failure that costs marks: the attachment that silently did not send. One URL either works or does not, and you can check it yourself in ten seconds.

Proof you submitted before the deadline — with an honest caveat

Every link records when it was created and every time it was opened. If a submission goes missing or a portal loses an upload, a timestamped link created at 23:14 on the due date is a real piece of evidence, and it is evidence you hold rather than evidence you have to request.

Now the caveat, because it matters more than the feature: this is your record, not an institutional one. It has no standing on its own, and it is not a substitute for submitting the way your course requires. Always submit through the official system, on time, even if you also send a link. Use the link timestamp as corroboration in a dispute — not as your submission.

If your institution's system is genuinely down at the deadline, the useful sequence is: create the link, email your tutor with the link and a screenshot of the error, and keep both. That is a much stronger position than a message saying you finished on time.

Do not break your own anonymous marking

Plenty of courses mark anonymously — the marker is supposed to see a candidate number, not your name. A link quietly undermines that in two places nobody thinks about, and the fix takes ten seconds.

This is not a rule we invented — it is your course's rule, and breaching it is the kind of small thing that turns into an awkward email. Read your assessment brief; if it does not mention anonymity, none of this applies and you can name the link whatever you like.

• The file name. sunny-final-v3.pdf tells the marker exactly who you are before they open anything. Name it by the assignment: assignment-2-report.pdf, or by your candidate number if your course uses one.
• The custom link name. A tidy slug is nice for a portfolio and wrong for an anonymous submission. If your course marks blind, take the auto-generated link rather than naming it after yourself.
• Document metadata. Word and Google Docs stamp the author name into the file. Check File → Properties before you export, or print to PDF to strip it.

Group projects: one link, several contributors

Group work runs into the honest limit of this tool immediately: there is no shared upload. One person owns the link and adds the files; nobody else can put anything into it. That sounds like a drawback and at a deadline it is usually the opposite.

One owner means one version. Everyone sends their part to the owner — chat, email, a shared drive, whatever your group already uses — and the owner assembles the final set and publishes one link. There is exactly one URL in the group chat, exactly one person who can change it, and no chance of two people uploading two conflicting 'final' reports twenty minutes before submission.

Practical arrangement that works: the owner publishes the album early, half-finished, and shares the link with the group. Everyone can see what is actually in the submission and flag what is missing, while the owner keeps replacing files right up to the deadline. The link never changes, so nobody has to re-check which version they are looking at.

The academic-integrity boundary

A public link can be found, copied, and reused. That cuts two ways and both are worth saying out loud.

We are not going to pretend a link is a compliance tool. What it is: a way to get large work in front of a marker without a size fight, plus a small set of controls — password, expiry, disable — to close it down when it has done its job.

• Your own work: an open link to a good assignment is a thing a future cohort can find. If that worries you, put a password on it (Pro), set an expiry, or simply disable the link once the mark comes back.
• Other people's work: do not publish a classmate's file, a group member's section, or an assignment you were given as an example. That is not a technical limit, it is the obvious line.
• Your institution's rules come first. Some courses forbid hosting coursework outside their system entirely. Check the assessment brief before you use a link at all.