Assignments - Guides from Canvas

For Instructors

For Students

The film clip here shows a generic Canvas interface. The interface at KI is largely the same, but in different colours.

For your students to be able to submit their work via Canvas, you need to add an assignment. When the assignment is created, there are a few important settings that you have decide on.

On first sight, it seems like a lot of settings, but the basic setting are quick to set. The settings for group assignments we cover further down on this page.

Add an assignment

We recommend that you start in the Module view when you add assignments. In this way it becomes clearly which assignments go with which material in the course. Students can also get an overview of all the assignments within the course by clicking on Assignments or Dashboard in the course menu.

Create a new assignment

Click on the plus symbol in the module which you would like to add the assignment in.
Choose Assignment
Choose to make a new assignment. You need a new assignment for every time students are required to submit their work.
Write a clear title so students know what the assignment is about.
Click Add item.
The assignment is not yet published. Click on the title to access the editor.

Edit the assignment

Edit an assignment

Click on the edit button
Write a text which explains the assignment. This is the text which will be seen when the students submit their work, so it is a good idea to write clearly.

Set how the assignment will be graded

Choose the grading options

In the points box you can decide how many points Canvas will give for the best possible result of the assignment. Canvas will show you as a teacher a summary of how the students' achievement during the course. If you don't need to have this summary, it doesn't really matter what you write. We suggest a setting a value of 1 point if you are unsure.
Assignment group is a function you can use is you would like to group assignments together and decide how they are weighed against each other. Otherwise, you can skip over this box. Submission of group assignments is done in a different place (we discuss this further down on the page).
Decide how the grading will be shown for each student. The simplest option is to use the Completed/Uncompleted option. If you use this, the student will be shown a tick or a cross which shows whether the assignment has been completed.

Good to know! The ability to write personal comments to students is always available, independent of the assessment settings.

Show grade as U/G, U/G/VG or Bologna

IMPORTANT! Before you choose one of KIs grading schemes you have to first activate the grading schemes you wish to use in your course.

You can find out more information on that here - choose KI's grading scheme

Grading format

Choose to show letter grades, and then click on Show grading scheme
Click on Choose a different grading scheme, then you will be able to find ready-made grading schemes for U/G, U/G/VG or Bologna.
Remember to inform your students that their final grades are the ones shown in Ladok. Grading in Canvas is only preliminary.

Set how the assignment will be submitted

It is possible to choose for an assignment to have the submission type 'no submission', which can seem a little strange. This is available so that Canvas can give the possibility to either submit an oral presentation, or to allow the possibility to keep attendance records for a lab.

Choose submission type

Choose Online in the submission type dropdown
Choose the forms of submission which are accepted.

Set the submission date

Choose the deadline

Use this box to choose the submission date for the assignment. If you do not choose a time, and only a date, the time will be set to midnight.
If the deadline is absolute, i.e. it is not possible to submit the assignment after the date, you can set this using the box Until.
If you don't want the students to be able to access an assignment before a set date, you can set the Available from option. Choosing this option means that students will not be able to see the assignment description before the set date. When students open the assignment, a message will appear stating that the assignment is locked until the date when it opens.
If you have students who have been granted extra writing time, you can allow this by clicking on the plus symbol, writing the student's name and setting a new date.

Tip: You can set exceptions from assignment deadlines at any time. If you decide that a student has a valid reason to submit an assignment later, you can click on the Edit button within the assignment, and add an exception for the student. Using this method, you can deal with all submissions in the same place, and avoid having to create separate solutions for individual students.

Click on Save and Publish!

Even if you have given an assignment a set submission date, it will not appear to the students unless it is also published.

If you want the students to read each other's work

There are many ways in which you can allow students to read each other's work.

If every student should get a couple of pieces of work to read, it's easiest to use Canvas' tool for peer-feedback.

If students should read all the work from, for example, a tutorial group or seminar group, it can be more practical to use Canvas's tool for group work (link).

How do assignments look for the students?

Student view before submission

When a student sees the assignment, they can see the due date and available date, number of points, and the assignment description.

Student view after submission

When the student has submitted their work, they will immediately receive a confirmation message on the right-hand side of the screen.

Tip: You can easily try out how your course looks for your students. Go to the course's homepage, and click on Student view. In student view you can try out submitting assignments, so you know how it will function.

After you have left the student view, you can even try out grading the work you have just submitted. You can then go back to student view to see how it looks when the students get their grading.

Connect a group assignment to a Group set

As you may have noticed, there is an option for creating group assignments. Creating an assignment for group work is very much like how you would create one for a normal assignment. The big difference is how a group assignment is connected to a Group set (group category). You can either use an existing group set (that you have used for another assignment or discussion) or you can create a group set specifically for the group assignment you are creating.

When you edit an assignment, you should click on the option This is a group assignment.

Group assignment options

Check the option This is a group assignment.
Choose which Group set the assignment should be connected to.
If you want, you can choose to give a separate grade to each student. Often it is enough to give a grade to the group as a whole though, in which case every student in the group will see the same grade.

Remember to click on Save and publish!

How does it look for the students?

Group assignment submission from the student's view

When the students have submitted their group assignment, the assignment dialog looks like normal, but there is an information box that says that it is a group assignment.

Everyone in the group will be able to see the submitted work, and everyone will be able to see the response to the work, provided that you have not selected the option to do individual grading.

When the students have submitted their work

You grade a group assignment in exactly the same way as you would grade a normal assignment. In SpeedGrader, you can see which groups have submitted their work, if you go to the grading overview, you can see which grades have been given to the different members in the group.

Tasks to complete to earn the diploma

Task: Make a new assignment in one of your modules. Set the submission type to ‘text entry’, and choose Display grade as Complete/Incomplete. Name the Assignment 1: Text entry box

Task: Create another assignment, with the submission type as ‘file upload’. Choose to display the grades as letter grades. Name the assignment Assignment 2: File upload

Task: Publish the assignments. Enter student view by first clicking on the Home button in the menu, then Student view. Have a look at both of your assignments from the point of view of a student.

Task: Create a group assignment which is connected to a group set. Remember that you can choose an existing group set. Remember though that if you want your students to get new group peers for this assignment, you will have to create a new group set.