Assignment Marking and Feedback – FAQs

• There are a number of different assessments that can be used in Canvas including standard assignments, peer to peer, Group assignments, non-submission assignments, non-graded assignments, graded and non-graded discussions, Studio assessments including presentations, quizzes and exams.  Assessment can also be through LTIs such as Cadmus, PeerScholar, BuddyCheck, PebblePad. 

• Assessment evidence can take many forms.  Most popular evidence types include written assignments and academic papers, media including Studio and YouTube videos, PowerPoint presentations, Excel Spreadsheets, links to webpages, Wikis, ePortfolios, academic posters, creative art and images, podcasts, reflective journals, witness and observation reports. 

• Each assignment/quiz/discussion has a Publish button. 
• Students cannot see or submit until it is published. 
• Once students submit, you cannot “unpublish” — you must use availability dates instead.

Yes, you can use the ‘View as Student’ button in the top right corner of Canvas. 

Yes, but only if there are no student submissions to the assignment. 

Yes.  When creating an assignment, there is an option to create an assignment based on collaboration groups (Group sets).  This will then allow assignments to be submitted and marked and graded as individual or group assignments. 

Digital Discovery Series – Creation and Management of Groups in Canvas

Depending on the number of students enrolled on a Canvas course, there are several options available to be able to allocate an assignment to specific (groups of) students.  (Administrative) Sections can be used to ‘group’ students, particularly good for large cohorts of students, and Diff Tags for groups of students requiring anonymity, e.g. DASS students.  These groups can then be used with the Assign to tool in Canvas (with specific dates and times) to adaptively release resources to students. 

Assignments: Use “Edit → Assign to” or “+ Add” to set alternative dates for specific students. 

Quizzes: Use “Moderate this quiz” to add extra time, attempts, or access windows. 

Discussions: Same method as Assignments 

Yes, unless you manage visibilty using:

• 1. Grade Posting Policy (manual or automatic) 
• 2. Mute/unmute (Grade Posting Policy) 
• 3. Hide/Show Grades 

Yes, you can use the Submission Attempts option on the assignment settings to determine whether the number of submissions is unlimited or limited to a specific number. Once the number of allowed submissions has been reached, no further submissions are permitted. 

Yes, you can:

• Create groups via the People → Groups area 

• Enable “This is a group assignment” 

• Choose whether everyone receives the same grade or individual grades 

Canvas has the Turnitin Plagiarism Framework LTI available in the Canvas assignment settings. In the assignment settings, once the Submission Type has been selected (online submission, Text Entry, File Upload), the Turnitin option will be enabled. 

Yes.  There are 2 ways to anonymise student names in Canvas Speedgrader.  

• 1. In the assignment settings select ‘Graders cannot view student names’ from the Anonymous Grading option.  
  
• 2. In Speedgrader, select the cog in the top left, Options, select ‘Hide student names in Speedgrader’. 

Common types: 

• File uploads (PDF, Word, etc.) 

• Online text entry 

• Media recordings 

• URL submissions 

• Group submission 

• External tools (Turnitin, Panopto, PebblePad, etc.) 

The Due Date and Time are the date and time when the assignment is due.  Student assignments submitted after the due date will be marked as late in the Gradebook. 

Available From is the date and time when the Assignments will become available to students. Students cannot view assignment content until after the Available from date has passed. 

Until date and time is when students can no longer submit the assignment.   

What is the difference between assignment due dates and availability dates? – Instructure Community

Yes.  If no Until date and time are specified, students can continue to submit after the Due date, but their submissions will be stamped late.  Also, if the Until date is after the Due date, students can submit up to the Until date, but their submissions will be stamped late. (Agreed) Extensions can be configured for students by adding new dates for those students. 

Yes. Staff with admin privileges can submit work on behalf of students from the Grade book. 

How do I submit an assignment on behalf of a student as an instructor? – Instructure Community 

Yes and No.  

Yes – instructor inline comments (annotations on the actual student work) can be anonymous. 

No – final assignment submission comments are not anonymous. The name and date stamp will appear for these comments and grade. 

Yes. When the Moderation option is selected in the assignment settings, moderation can be undertaken to Quality Assure marking, second marking and blind second marking.  

However, Canvas is currently restricted to a maximum of 10 markers per assignment (submissions). Further markers over this maximum will have access but will be read only, and therefore will not be able to record comments or grades.

The blind second marking setting is linked to the moderation setting. When moderation is enabled, blind second marking is enabled. However, this will again be subject to the maximum markers limit (of 10). Second markers can mark student submissions without seeing the name of the first marker, but they will be able to view the inline comments (annotations) throughout the work. 

Yes, filtering is enabled when Sections have been created and students allocated to them. If differentiation Tags have been used, filtering can be achieved via the Gradebook, not from SpeedGrader. 

No, QuickMarks held in Turnitin cannot be migrated to Canvas due to incompatibilities in file formats. 

Yes. Canvas Speedgrader has a comment library which can store assignment submission comments. It cannot however, store inline (annotation) comments.  

As an alternative, there is a Chrome Extension called AnnotatePRO that can imitate the Turnitin QuickMarks feature. 

Having the anonymity setting enabled will not allow staff to view who has submitted in the Gradebook as the assignment column will be greyed out. However, you can go to the Course Analytics, Select Reports, and run the report ‘Missing Assignments’. This will download a csv file of all student submissions, which can then be filtered further. 

Yes. Go to the Course Analytics, Select Reports, and run the report Late Assignments’. This will download a csv file of all late student submissions, which can then be filtered further. 

Grades and comments can be released to students in 3 ways:

Manual – grades and comments are released to students simultaneously by a nominated person. Best for summative assessment in which moderation will take place. 

Automatic – grades and comments are released to students as each submission is marked. Probably best for some formative assessments. 

Date Released – grades and comments are released to students based on a recorded date for each. 

Yes, Speedgrader will display the similarity score in the top right corner of Speedgrader. 

The University policy is that students cannot see their similarity score for summative assessments. However, for limited number of formative assessments and trial runs, they can see the report. 

Rubrics exist at the course level and can be accessed and edited by any instructor with an enrolment on that course.

If wanting to copy a rubric to another course, use the Copy To function to create a separate/unlinked rubric in your other course. 

Yes – by enabling the ‘Use this rubric for assignment grading” setting. When enabled, each rubric criteria must be assigned a score.

The marker will then complete the rubric as usual, and once submitted, the final grade is automatically calculated based on the total score.

When the instructor selects that score range, the given score will default to the upper end of that range. If wanting to assign a custom score within that range (e.g. 6 points), the points field can be manually edited. 

Technically, no – Canvas does not support percentage weighting of rubrics. However, they can be adapted to work with the points-based system in Canvas, whereby proportional point values are assigned to each criterion within the rubric. 

Once point values have been determined for each criterion, you can then customise the individual performance levels within each one by assigning point values as normal. 

Yes. When a rubric is created and added to an assignment, in Edit mode, you can select Unscored from the scoring drop down menu. The rubric can then be used during marking to select a criteria judgement, and comments added if required, but there are no points generated for these judgements. The overall grade/mark for the assessment will be added manually (based on these judgements). 

Where there is more than one marker, there is only one rubric for the submission. Depending on established practices, the first marker may provide inline comments (annotations) but not complete the rubric at this stage. The second marker also provides inline comments where appropriate. Discussions and agreement between the markers will result in the first marker completing the rubric.