how to create assignment in canvas instructure

Canvas @ Yale

• Creating an Assignment

Updated on Dec 03, 2021

Instructors can use Assignments to create and track graded and ungraded assignments, including online and offline submission, no submission, discussions, and quizzes.

Table of Contents

This article will address the following information:

Assignment Settings

Creating the assignment.

• Click on " Assignments " from the course navigation .
• Click " +Assignment " at the top-right corner.

• Name your assignment in the top box.
• Enter a description or assignment details in the Rich Content Editor.
• For more information on using the Rich Content Editor, review the " Using the Rich Content Editor " article.

Below the Rich Content Editor are assignment settings that you can selected to fit your assignment's specific needs and configuration.

• Points - Set the number of points the assignment is worth. If ungraded, enter "0."
• See the article " Creating Weighted Assignment Groups " for more information.
• Complete/Incomplete
• Letter Grade - Uses the grading scheme
• GPA Scale - Uses the grading scheme
• Not Graded - If the assignment has no submission AND is ungraded

Check off the " Do not count this assignment towards the final grade " option below the " Display Grade As " drop down if the assignment has a submission, but should not be counted towards the course's final grade.

• No Submission
• Website URL
• Media Recording
• File Uploads
• External Tool
• Group Assignment - Select to designate the assignment as a group assignment.
• Peer Reviews - Select to have students review their peers' work to provide feedback.
• Assign - Select who and when will see the assignment, as well as set the due date.
• Click " Save " or " Save & Publish " when finished.

For more help, please contact  [email protected] .

Assessments, Feedback and Grades

• Building Assessments in Canvas
• Creating a Media Recording Assignment
• Creating an Ungraded, No-Submission Assignment (Reading Assignment)
• Submitting a File to a Canvas Assignment on a Student's Behalf
• Implementing Peer Review Assessments
• Duplicating an Assignment
• Setting Lock / Availability Dates
• Due Dates versus Display Dates
• Checking a Canvas Activity in Student View without Releasing It to Students
• Assignments (Vendor Guides)
• Turnitin: Creating a Turnitin Assignment
• Turnitin: Assignment Settings Options
• Turnitin: Viewing the Similarity Report / Originality Score (Instructor Guide)
• Creating a Discussion Board
• Implementing Online Discussions
• Discussions (Vendor Guides)
• Strategies for Delivering Exams / Quizzes in Canvas
• Introducing New Quizzes
• New Quizzes (Vendor Guides)
• Quizzes (Vendor Guides)
• Supporting and Using Feedback in Your Class
• Submitting Audio / Video Feedback to a Student
• Grading Assignments Using the SpeedGrader
• Utilizing Anonymous Grading
• Accessing the SpeedGrader from the Gradebook
• Gradebook Overview and Features
• Understanding Gradebook Views and Filters
• Using the Grade Posting Policy
• Changing Grading Schemes / Grade Letter Ranges
• Creating Weighted Assignments Groups
• Importing Grades into Gradebook
• SpeedGrader (Vendor Guides)
• Rubrics (Vendor Guides)
• Gradebook (Vendor Guides)
• Feedback & Accessibility Barriers Tool: Overview
• Enabling / Viewing the Feedback & Accessibility Barriers Tool
• Mid-Semester Feedback: Overview
• Disabling / Enabling the Mid-Semester Feedback Tool in Your Canvas Course
• Timing of Mid-Semester Feedback
• Managing Mid-Semester Feedback Survey Questions
• Viewing / Downloading Student Mid-Semester Feedback Submissions
• New Analytics (Vendor Guides)
• Analytics (Vendor Guides)
• Outcomes (Vendor Guides)

Other Resources

• Accessibility
• Inclusivity
• Canvas @ Yale Settings
• Enrollment & Permissions
• Technical Support Guides
• Updates & Known Issues
• Canvas @ Yale Admin / Registrar
• Instructor Getting Started Guides
• Course Management
• Canvas @ Yale External Applications
• Discover Instructional Tools
• Instructor FAQ
• Student Getting Started Guides
• Student Assessment Guides
• Student FAQ

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Canvas assignment groups.

The Assignments page is arguably the most central to successful Canvas course utilization.

• It controls the columns in the gradebook and gradebook calculations.
• It displays all things gradable, including assignments, gradable discussions, and quizzes. Each can be created in Assignments.
• Dates used in the syllabus and calendar are rapidly edited in Assignments.

Use assignment groups to achieve:

• Assignment categorization
• Drop lowest  n  scores
• Drop highest  n  scores
• Never drop  x  assignment
• Weighting of grades

Canvas creates a group called "Assignments" by default, but you can change the group title or create additional groups. Because the default group is Assignments, Canvas places all assignment types into that group. When you are creating a new assignment, graded discussion, or quiz you will have the option to designate it as belonging to a previously created assignment group.

On This Page

Create an Assignment Group

Move an assignment between groups, weighting assignment groups, video tutorial, assignment page icons, filter the gradebook by assignment group.

On the Assignment page, click + Group

In the Add Assignment Group box, type the name of the group and click Save

Click on the double column of dots next to an assignment and drag to a new group.

Or, click on the three dots to the right of the assignment and click on Move To... then choose the desired assignment group and location.

Click on the assignment settings, then choose Assignment Groups Weight from the menu

Check the box to "Weight final grade based on assignment groups" and then enter the percentage assigned for each group

(weights should typically equal 100, but can exceed 100 for extra credit)

This short video will walk you through the process of creating weighted assignment groups in your Canvas course.

On the Grades page, click on the View dropdown menu and choose the Filters option

Then, select Assignment Groups from the menu

A new dropdown menu will appear at the top of the page

Click on All Assignment Groups to select a certain group of assignments you would like to see

• Help Center
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Use Assignments LTI™ with Canvas

Google Assignments and Canvas expanded Google Docs Editors and Google Drive to be compatible with Canvas for file submissions. With Assignments, you can distribute and grade student work, analyze student submissions for plagiarism detection, and use Google Docs and Drive with Canvas. 

Features and benefits of Assignments

When admins enable Google Assignments in Canvas settings, you can use its features and benefits.

• Grade in Google’s grading interface or in SpeedGrader™.
• File attachments to an assignment so each student gets their own copy to edit and submit.
• Detect missed citation checks and possible plagiarism with the originality reports feature.
• Students can submit Drive files to Canvas assignments, which instructors can grade in SpeedGrader™.
• Embed Drive files with the Canvas rich text editor.
• Add Drive files to Canvas Modules.

Assignments also provides improvements from Google Apps LTI:

• Officially supported by Google and covered by the Google Workspace for Education Terms of Service.
• Provides an option for admins to require students to use their school-issued Google accounts.
• Uses Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI) 1.3 for stronger security.
• Create a new Canvas assignment.

Students can submit Drive files that you can grade with SpeedGrader™.

For teachers

Allow students to submit drive files with canvas assignments.

• After you create a new Canvas assignment, next to "Submission Type", select Online .
• Under "Online Entry Options", select File Uploads.

Important: You must select File Uploads or the submission will fail.

For students

Turn in assignments.

• Ensure you're signed into your school account. 
• Next to "File Upload", click  Google Drive.
• To open a Google Drive window, click Select file.
• Select the Drive file.

• Sign in to Canvas.
• Open the course.

• Sign in to your Google Account.
• Click Allow .
• Select the Google Drive file.
• Click Submit.

Open all   |   Close all

From October 2023, Instructure will no longer support the Google Apps LTI. This means:

• No new installs will be allowed.
• No further development will be made on it.
• No customer support will be available.

Google and Instructure makes sure that Google Assignments LTI 1.3 has the Google Apps LTI functions, and includes:

• Improved security
• Flexibility
• Integrations 

Current Google Apps LTI users won’t lose access but should transition over to Google Assignments LTI 1.3.

To use the latest Assignments features, you can install and migrate to Google Assignments LTI 1.3.

No. Currently, you can’t embed a form or select one as a file type for quizzes. To use Forms for quizzes, create a form and share the link with your students. Learn how to create a Google Form.

• Any submitted work for the Google Apps LTI Cloud assignment that you want to migrate will reset. 
• If you want to keep your previous submissions, make a copy of the Canvas assignment .
• Find the Canvas assignment you want to migrate to Google Assignments LTI 1.3.

• Click Find .
• If you can’t find this option, request your Canvas administrator to turn on Google Assignments LTI 1.3 .
• Link your Google Workspace for Education account.
• Click Continue .
• Attach the Drive worksheet files.
• Choose your grading tool, then make sure the due date and points are updated.
• Click Create .

Related topics

• Set up Assignments in Canvas
• Set up Assignments in Schoology or another LMS
• Set up Assignments in Blackboard
• Set up Assignments in D2L/Brightspace
• Set up Assignments in Moodle
• Set up Assignments in Sakai

Google, Google Workspace, and related marks and logos are trademarks of Google LLC. All other company and product names are trademarks of the companies with which they are associated.

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Canvas Updates Fall 2024

• Author By Tammie Patten
• Publication date August 29, 2024
• (Updated On August 29, 2024)
• Categories: Educational Technologies , Resources
• Categories: Canvas

Canvas has updated many of its features for Fall 2024. This post describes some of the most important ones for Dartmouth faculty.

Canvas has a few features that have gotten updates and additions over the past few months. As you head into Fall, it might be helpful to acquaint yourself with some of these updates/changes.

The two most notable changes are the Discussions Redesign and the “Assign to” feature. 

Discussions/Announcements Redesign

We published a blog post about the new Discussions redesign in February. Since this blog post was released, Canvas has pushed the redesign out to all customers. Not only does the redesign impact the look and feel of discussions but it also makes slight changes to the Announcements interface. We highly recommend taking a look at the video in our post and playing with the new look and feel in a Sandbox course or in your Fall course prior to publishing. 

“Assign To” Feature

In July, Instructure also introduced the “Assign To” feature in Canvas. This feature expands the ability of faculty to assign various parts of their Canvas site to students. Previously, instructors and course designers could assign only quizzes, assignments, and graded discussions to specific students and/or sections. Now, educators can:

• Assign entire modules , pages, quizzes, assignments, graded and ungraded discussions to individual students and sections.
• Manage course object assignments, availability, and due dates for all object types, directly from the Module Index page.

One thing to note about this new feature is that it introduced a new interface for assigning due dates to various types of graded content. There is now the ability to adjust dates without editing the assignment. Simply click the Assign to button in the assignment and a tray will slide out, allowing you to change due dates and availability for an assignment. 

Partnership with Lucid Visual Collaboration Suite

Canvas has entered into a partnership with Lucid, a provider of virtual whiteboard and diagramming software. Dartmouth Canvas users will get free access to Lucid’s suite of tools, and the robust integration with Canvas creates new options for interactivity and collaboration. This Instructure blog post details some of the new features and discusses how to get started. We have enabled this integration in our instance of Canvas through assignments and the Rich Content Editor. These three short videos go into more detail about using the tools:

• Accessing Lucid in Canvas
• How to create a Lucid Assignment in Canvas
• How to embed Lucid content and collaborative activities in Canvas

It has been a busy summer for Instructure! In addition to the above new features Instructure has also released the following updates to tools in your course:

• Screenrecording for use as feedback in Speedgrader
• Ability for course faculty to add signatures and auto replies to their Canvas inbox
• Enhancements to the “Message Students Who…” functionality

As always, the Learning Design and Innovation group is happy to assist with course design or Canvas questions. Please feel free to email us at [email protected] and make sure to bookmark our website and use it as a source for more information, to book a consult or to submit a help ticket with someone on our team.

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A Quick Guide to Creating Mastery Paths

Table of Contents

There’s more than one way to teach and learn, we know this to be true. But how can you use Canvas to create differentiated learning experiences for your students? What tool should you use for greater flexibility in your instruction? That’s where Mastery Paths come in. Mastery Paths is a powerful differentiation tool, allowing teachers to customize learning pathways for students based on performance. When used in a scenario-based environment, Mastery Paths can also help teachers gamify their content and engage students. 

Philip Jarosz and Joi Chimera joined us at InstructureCon to share their best tips and tricks for creating “fruitful” paths that personalize learning for each student. Here are three takeaways from their session:

#1 Determine how your paths will differentiate.

Mastery Paths can be a great tool for practicing targeted remediation to meet individual learning needs. Jarosz recommends starting your Mastery Path with a pre-assessment for all students. This “source content” score will determine each student’s learning path. Decide ahead of time how you are going to group students to ensure you are making the most of each Mastery Path you create. The choice is yours, but knowing how the path will differentiate ahead of time will help you guide students on their learning journey.

Jarosz and Chimera provided a great example in their session about how to create different levels for each student group. Each student may be given different assignments or options within the Mastery Path based on their level of understanding. So students who may not have scored as high on a specific assignment or assessment are given extra scaffolding to get them to where they need to be before moving forward.

#2 Design with the end in mind.

Jarosz and Chimera encouraged educators to be clear on learning objectives before building course content. Designing your path backwards will help guide your scenario-based lesson plan and ensure there’s meaningful learning behind the fun. Assign Mastery Paths to each item or assignment, conditional on a student’s pre-assessment score. Some students may need more review, and others may be ready to move on. There’s more than one route to the “end” of the path. (Learn how to assign conditional items in a MasteryPath here ).

#3 Collaborate to create.

As Jarosz said in his session, “Team up with a buddy. Don’t go it alone!” It can feel overwhelming to start using new Canvas tools on your own, so collaborate with other educators and use crowd-sourced resources and templates in CanvasCommons to compile your content. 

Once you choose a template to start with, create all your lesson content — pages, assignments, quizzes, puzzles, etc. — within one module so you can begin to visualize the guided path from a student’s perspective. Don’t be afraid to get creative, either! Feel free to center your Mastery Path around a theme or gamify the learning experience by giving students an objective to follow. Depending on the concept you choose, you can add creative icons and labels for quick visual cues when organizing your content.

Watch the full session for step-by-step instructions and tips for creating an engaging Mastery Path for your students.

Happy Mastery Path building! Remember to take it one step (or, as they say, “one grape”) at a time.

Discover More Topics:

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