Assignments in Canvas have a wider functional role than they do in eClass: they are used to create all traditional graded student activities (student assignment submission dropboxes, graded discussions, graded quizzes, and external tool assignments like Assign2), but also to record participation grades, to create ungraded practice activities, and to create manual gradebook columns. By default they will appear on the Assignments Page, the Syllabus Page and the Calendar. As traditional assignments, they can be evaluated with rubrics and aligned with outcomes. Graded assignments will automatically create gradebook columns.

This article will outline the basics for creating assignments and then cover some of Canvas assignments' advanced and new features. Please see Canvas Community KB articles about assignments for in-depth information and a detailed FAQ.

Creating an assignment

In your course tabs to the left, click on the "Assignments" tab to go to the Assignments page:

To create any assignment click the +Assignments button to create a new assignment:

On the assignments page, if you have already set up grade weightings for your course through Assignment groups, you will see these categories displayed (and should take note of which the assignment should be added to.) It is recommended that you set up your assignment groups (grade weightings) to correspond to your syllabus at the outset of course creation - adding these throughout the term can confuse students trying to track their progress.

Once you have decided whether to group your assignments, you can also move groups and assignments between and within groups by clicking and holding the eight dots to the left of the assignment name:

Basic Assignment Settings

• Assignment Name: Give your assignment a clear and descriptive name.
• Description: Add instructions, guidelines, and any necessary information for the assignment in the description box.
• Assignment Group: Assign the assignment to a specific group if you have categorized your assignments.
• Points: Set the total points for the assignment. Points can be displayed in a variety of formats:

Note: you can set the points to equal the simple weight of the assignment for the final grade or set the points to any other value and weight its module group. 

• Submission Type: Choose how students will submit their work (e.g., online, external tool, on paper, etc.). See below for more details.
• Submission Attempts: Choose how many attempts students are allowed for the assignment (if applicable).
• Group assignment: Choose whether to set a group assignment and whether students submit as a group or individually.
• Peer reviews: Choose manually or automatically whether students will review each others’ work.
• Assign to: Choose whether to assign to the whole class, an individual student, a course group, or a course section.
• Due Date: Set the due date and time for the assignment.
• Available From: Optionally, set the date and time when the assignment will be available to students.
• Available Until: Optionally, set the date and time when the assignment will no longer be available to students.
• Add Additional Options: You might have additional options like enabling anonymous grading or allowing late submissions.

Just below the area for Assignment description and instructions are buttons that show keyboard shortcuts, an accessibility checker, the number of words in the description area, view HTML code, switch to full screen, and resize the frame:

Assignment Submission Type Options

The submission type could be set to either 'Text entry' or 'File Uploads' for a basic submissions (but not both.) It is possible to limit file uploads to specific file types but not possible to limit the number of files uploaded. If this is required, instructors can also create Canvas quizzes containing File upload questions that DO have the option of limiting files (though these cannot be graded using the SpeedGrader™ annotation tool.) Quizzes can also be used to create 'assignments' that contain both online text entry and file upload questions.

Other options include:

• Links to a student's website,
• Media recordings created with YuJa or Canvas Studio,
• Student annotations on a document uploaded by the instructor:

Instructors can also add a variety of external tool assignment types:

• Assign2: a collaborative assessment tool to streamline grading,
• Canvas Studio: a video submission option,
• Google Assignments: an option to collect, analyze, and grade student work with Google Assignments,
• Quizzes: Add quizzes via external tool to control visibility (for use with SEM),
• Smart Exam Monitor: a proctoring tool for audio, camera, and screen capture that would be added in conjunction with a quiz,
• YouTube: a video submission option,
• YuJa Media: a video submission option.

Once 'External tool' is selected in the 'Submission type', these tools are accessible by scrolling through the external tool dropdown:

Save or Save & Publish

Once you've filled in all the necessary details, you can Save the assignment as a draft if you're not ready to publish it or Save and Publish it immediately.

Monitor and Grade Submissions

After publishing the assignment, you can monitor student submissions, provide feedback, and grade their work directly within Canvas with SpeedGrader™. The options to do this depend on the Submission type and whether any advanced grading features are used.

SpeedGrader™ will be available in the top right in every published graded assignment, including quizzes or graded discussions (or from within the Grades tab):

SpeedGrader™ is a grading interface that allows instructors to assign a grade manually or by a rubric. If the submission type is a file upload or a student annotation, instructors can add comments and markup directly onto a student's submissions to an assignment.

Important Note - grading via the SpeedGrader™ automatically notifies students when new scores or comments are added unless they are hidden:

Some advanced grading features include:

• Moderated grading: where multiple individuals can grade an assignment,
• Rubrics: guided expectations for assignment grading,
• Peer review: where students assess each other's work.
• Downloading assignments in bulk and then re-uploading after grading.

Using the Grader Annotation Tools

When adding annotations to a student submission in the SpeedGrader™, you have various options such as comments, highlighted and struck-through text, text boxes, area annotations, and drawings. Each type of annotation should be clear from its icon or other graphical element.

When using the Drawing tool to make annotations on student's submissions, individual annotations must be saved by clicking the checkmark icon over the drawing:

For more information, see, How do I add annotated comments in student submissions using DocViewer in SpeedGrader™?

Extra notes and considerations for Canvas Assignments

This section will highlight some key points to consider when deploying and grading assignments in Canvas, particularly behaviors that are different from the eClass system.

Reopening assignments/allowing re-submission

The Canvas system does not have a mechanism to allow resubmission of assignments. Even system administrators are unable to reset a submission once it's been made by a student. There are two workarounds that can be used if a student needs to resubmit an assignment to have it graded in the SpeedGrader™:

- Adjust the assignment settings to allow additional attempts; This setting unfortunately can't be applied to a single user, only all users that the assignment is assigned to

or
- Duplicate the assignment, and assign the duplicate only to the student(s) resubmitting. This will need to be accounted for in the gradebook as well, the easiest way is likely to excuse the grade on the duplicate and transfer the grade manually to the original assignment. 

Grading and delivering feedback

When grading assignments, most instructors will want to first set a grading policy in the gradebook, or hide the grades from within the SpeedGrader™ (as shown earlier in this article), to hide the grades from view. The reason for this is that annotations and comments in the SpeedGrader™ will otherwise be immediately available to students. Saved comments in particular will trigger a notification on the main course page. 

Group Assignments

Group assignments should only be open for submission once group memberships are established in the group set. Students can be added to groups retroactively but if they've submitted as an individual, there is no way to harmonize those submissions. If the group has already submitted, the submission is deleted when the individual is added.
To prevent confusion or submission by individuals, assignments can be assigned to the groups in the corresponding group set rather than 'everyone' but note that this will prevent the assignment from showing at all to ungrouped students:

When grading a group assignment, if the option "Assign grades to each student individually" is not checked, there is no way to override a single student's grade without changing the grade of all of their group members, even from the gradebook. To workaround, it is safe to enable/disable the setting retroactively.