Assign2 is a third-party tool that features several advanced assessment streams, including traditional scanned paper workflows, automated code-testing repositories, and a fully integrated quiz delivery engine.

Students can complete solutions for long-form problems on paper and photograph or scan them to upload as their assessment submission. For in-person exams, the tool can be used to create exam booklets containing the exam questions and a form students complete to identify their work. These are then scanned and uploaded back into the tool for grading.

Enabling Assign2 to Deliver an Assessment

1. First, make certain that Assignments are not visible in your course navigation Settings:

2. Create and set up an Assignment.

Note: Be sure to set an availability date in the assignment or the Assign2 settings as students could open Assign2 early from the Grade book. Do not set a due date, as the submissions will be marked as submitted when the grades are pushed, not when the students submit. Put the due date in the assignment description and set it within assign2 to enforce it. 

As well, leave the submission attempts set to "Unlimited". This should also be controlled within Assign2 rather than the Canvas assignment settings (limiting attempts won't cause an issue for students but will prevent you from pushing grades from the tool more than once).


3. Add the Assign2 LTI to it:

• For Submission Type, choose External Tool.
  
• Click Find.
• In the configuration dialog, select 'Assign 2', then click Select:

4. Check the box ‘Load this tool in a new tab’.
5. Save and Publish the assignment.
6. Once you have saved the assignment, click on ‘Load <assignment name> in a new window.’

Configuring Assign2

Assign2 can be configured in 3 different ways. These options are the same ones available for eClass and are described in detail in the following articles:

1. Creating Online Homework Assignments Using Assign2

Instructors can create online homework assessments using the Assign2 external tool in their eClass course. Assign2 allows students to capture long-form written work as image files that can be uploaded for instructors to mark online using a time-saving interface. 

2. Creating In-Class Paper (PDF) Exams to be Graded Online Using Assign2

Instructors can create PDF exam forms to grade exams or assignments completed on paper by students in class.

3. Delivering Group Paper (PDF) Exams Using Assign2

Instructors can deliver 2-stage (group) exams using the 'In class PDF Assessment' workflow in Assign2. This method of exam delivery allows students to take the exam individually at first and then take a second version of the exam as a group to discuss as peers to come to a consensus or debate about the correct answers. All students in the group then receive the same mark for the combined part of the assessment (most often some lesser proportion of the overall grade than their original assessment score.) General setup and grading General Assign2 setup instructions are available at Managing Student Assignments in Assign2. Help with grading Assign2 submissions is available Marking Student Submissions in Assign2.

4. Structured Quizzes

General Setup and Grading

Instructions on how to manage Assign2 assessments are available at Managing Student Assignments in Assign2.

Details for grading in Assign2 are available at Marking Student Submissions in Assign2.

Grade Sync Reliability Update: While you should still click "Update users from LMS" prior to sync, the grade push to Canvas is now significantly more robust. The integration features automatic retries on failure and throttled background delivery to safely handle large course sync operations without overwhelming the Canvas. (Note: Ensure the Canvas assignment is Published for the sync to function).

Additional Assessment Types

Any Exam

This assessment type allows instructors to upload and grade in-person student work without pre-creating booklets - the only requirement is that each student's work is identified by a cover sheet that contains some student identifier.

Using the Assign2 AnyExam Assessment Type

Programming Assessments (formerly Coding Assignment)

This assessment type allows instructors to configure environments for students to submit source code directly through the platform. Out-of-the-box, this compiles and automatically tests student-submitted source code for Python, Java, and C/C++ against instructor-defined test cases. Instructors can also download all submissions as a zip archive or use a dedicated code marking view to annotate student code.

Creating an Assign2 Coding Assignment Assessment Type

Submitting Assign2 Coding Assignments (For Students)

Structured Quizzes (formerly Online Quiz)

This quiz system allows instructors to build and deliver assessments entirely within Assign2, giving students the flexibility to complete them online or on paper.

• Supported Question Types: Natively supports Multiple Choice (single and multi-correct), Short Answer (auto-graded), Essay (supporting file uploads and AI-assisted grading), STACK computer algebra with live validation, WeBWorK math questions, and Cloze/Matching imports.
• Student Experience & Offline Resilience: The student interface features a built-in timer with automatic submission and a question navigation drawer. If a student experiences a network drop while writing online, the tool works offline and automatically syncs their answers when reconnected.
• Printable Quiz Support: Online quizzes can be exported as print-ready PDFs for physical exams. These generated papers include unique QR codes, barcodes, and student ID bubble sheets so that scanned paper responses are automatically read and graded using optical character recognition (OCR).
• Instructor Protections: Instructors can enforce password-protected access or restrict quiz completion to specific campus networks.

Creating Structured Quiz Assessments