Unit 3: Creating Graded Assignments

Assignments Overview

Assignments in Canvas are basically anything you wish to assign students-- tasks with or without a digital file to turn in. All graded items in your Canvas course are considered "Assignments" by Canvas. So when you visit the Assignments section of your course, you'll see listed there graded discussions, homework assignments, quizzes... anything and everything graded! Your students will see grade-able items there too, but you can control what they see, which Assignments they can work on, and the layout looks a bit different from them than it will for you.

Canvas allows a variety of student work to be added to a course site as Assignments, including writings and recordings, Discussions, Quizzes, and readings and other preparation work not formally graded.  

Anything added as an Assignment in Canvas can be used in a number of ways:

• It appears on the calendar and Syllabus list, so students can track tasks more conveniently.
• It can easily be linked to any other part of the site where the rich text editor is used.
• Any results are displayed to students in Grades.
• Results can also be brought into the calculations of a grading scheme for the course.

Creating Assignments

Canvas allows you to easily create an assignment for your students to submit their work. The submission can be accessed via the Gradebook or the SpeedGrader. For specifics on how to create assignments in Canvas, visit How do I create an assignment? Links to an external site. resource. Use the Rich Content Editor to add images, text, links, equations, or insert media. Use the Content Selector in the Sidebar to link to or upload course resources, including files and images.

Choosing assignment submission types

Canvas offers many different ways for students to submit assignments. As the instructor, you can set up submissions preferences that will allow for different submission types and restrictions when necessary. 

In the Submission Type drop-down menu, select the type of submission you want to accept for the assignment. By default, the submission type will be set to Online.

• No Submission is when you do not want students to submit an assignment in Canvas. This assignment type can be used to create extra columns in the Gradebook, or when you want to create an assignment that involves multiple scores. Submission Type does not apply to Not Graded assignments.
• Online (Links to an external site.) is when you want students to submit their assignments using Canvas.
• On Paper is when you want students to submit an assignment to you but not through Canvas. This assignment type applies to traditional face-to-face courses or hybrid courses when you want the assignment turned in during class, but you still want to create a column in the Canvas Gradebook for grading purposes.
• External Tool (Links to an external site.) is when you want students to submit their assignments using an external app (LTI) enabled for your course. You must enter a URL for the external tool.

Assignment settings are persistent to always remember and display the settings created or edited in the previous assignment in the course. Based on prior assignments, one or more of these options may already be selected for you.

Note: No Submission and On Paper assignments still appear to students on their Assignments page. To avoid confusion, it is best to make a note in the description about the assignment so students will know whether or not a submission is required and if so, how they are supposed to submit it.  

Considerations for Creating Assignments

We recommend starting all assignments with three things:

• Instructions and Goals
• How To Complete Assessment Successfully
• How Assessments Will Be Evaluated (a brief statement clarifying how the assignment will be evaluated. 

Group Assignments

The first step for creating group assignments in Canvas is to create a group set that allows you to segments students into group to participate in and submit group assignments. Full resource for creating groups Links to an external site..

Creating Group Sets

Groups can be made via the People tool or when creating an assignment. In this example the groups will be created via the People tool.  Generally, it best to create the group set from people first.

The Group Set dialog box will appear. Review the numbered items below.

1. Group Set Name - Name the Assignment groups. Note: At this point only the group set is created. If you decide to manually create groups, students will not have access until the groups within the group set are created and students are added. 
2. Self Sign-Up - Next to Self-Sign-Up select the box next to Allow self sign-up if desired for students to self-enroll in a group. There is an additional option to separate students by sections. Please note semester courses only have one section of enrollments. 
3. Group Structure - Next to Group Structure select the desired option. If the first option is chosen, the groups will automatically be created and students will be enrolled in a group. Choose the manual option if desired to create the groups within the set from the group screen. If your course is crosslisted with other sections, you can also require group members to be in the same section when the groups are created. 
4. Leadership - Next to Leadership check the box next to Automatically assign a student group leader and select desire option. Click Save.

On assignment page configure the assignment as desired. Review the group options below.

1. Check the box next to This is a Group Assignment. 
2. Check the box next to Assign Grades to Each Student Individually if you wish to assign each student an individual grade for the group work. If not checked, all students in the group will receive the same grade and in the SpeedGrader you will input grades once for the group.
3. Once the group option is checked and if a group set has not been created in the course yet, the Create a group set dialog box will appear. If there are already group sets in the course, select the desired group set to use for the assignment OR click New Group Category to create a new group set. 

Note: You cannot use the moderating grading with group assignments.

Extra Credit Assignments

Currently, there is not default option for adding extra credit in Canvas. Therefore, here are a few creative ways to offer extra credit in Canvas.

You can give students extra credit in Canvas several ways:
• Create a New Assignment
• Add Extra Points to an Existing Assignment
• Fudge Points for a Quiz
• Add Extra Credit to a Rubric

Review step-by-step instructions for adding extra credit to Canvas Links to an external site.. 

Printable Extra Credit Resource Links to an external site. (Montclair University).

Assignment Example

The following is a sample assignment from our Quality Online Teaching and Learning with Canvas  course and demonstrates the key elements of how an assignment appears in Canvas for students.