3 Create Assignments
Solution: Canvas Assignments
One solution for this design challenge might be to use online Assignments may be used to collect student work and to create gradebook columns for various types of student participation/interaction.
In Canvas, an “assignment” may be a Quiz, a Discussion, or an Assignment. See the video for an overview of Canvas Assignments:
- Canvas Guide Video: Assignments Overview (8 min)
Canvas offers a variety of options and settings allowing you to create almost any kind of assignment that you will need. Below are a few examples of Canvas assignment options.
Canvas Assignments in Action!
Try one of the following ideas:
- Create a low stakes formative quiz to allow students to check for understanding. This may be a graded or ungraded quiz, allow multiple attempts and provide automatic feedback for answers so that students can take the quiz multiple times and learn from any mistakes.
- Create a small group collaborative writing project. In your assignment settings, indicate this is a group assignment and choose settings that allow students to share a Google doc URL with you for their submission.
Use Canvas Assignments: Faculty Resources
Tips, Tricks, and Takeaways
Differentiated Assignments: Canvas has the ability to set multiple due dates based on sections or individual students or to assign different assignments to individual students as well as setting Mastery Paths. Please review following guide for details on the differences between the due date and availability dates in Canvas Assignments.
There are three main ways instructors can configure assignments to allow for differentiated instruction. Below is a brief overview of what each option does and how instructors can use differentiated assignments in a course.
- Differentiate by Due Date– This option allows the instructor to set differentiate due dates for individual students, section or groups and can be helpful when students miss work and need to makeup work. Students will only see the due date and availability period assign to them. For instructors assignments with multiple due dates will the text multiple dates where the due date displays on the assignment index page. Note: This option will not work with TurnItIn assignments setup as external tool.
- Differentiate by Student (or section or group)– This option allows the instructor to assign an assignment to an individual student, section or group. This is particularly useful when an instructor wishes to assign different projects for students. Students will only see the assignments they are assigned and only the assignments that have been assigned to the student will be included in the total calculation for the student. Instructors will see all assignments in the gradebook; however for assignments that have been differentiated by student, instructors will only be able to enter grades for assigned students. DO NOT use this option with assignment that already has student submissions! Use the Differentiate by due date so all student grades stay in the gradebook.
- Differentiate by mastery paths– When the mastery paths is turned on in a course the option to assign to the mastery paths becomes available. For more information on mastery paths see the following guide.
Setting Up Extra Credit Assignments: You can create extra credit assignments. Review the following guides for details on creating extra credit assignments.
- How do I give extra credit in a course? (Links to an external site.)
- Creating an Extra Credit Quiz (Links to an external site.) – This guide was created by Kona Jones in the Canvas Community. This guide is for the current quiz tool. It is a bit more tricky giving extra credit with a quiz in the current quiz tool. Creating extra credit quizzes is much easier and similar to creating extra credit assignments with the assignment tool in Canvas. See New Quiz Tool Overview for details.
Key Takeaways
A few things to remember as you plan to use Canvas Assignments.
- Assignments can mean a couple of different things in Canvas.
- The Assignments Index Page will list all graded assignments in the course and will include Canvas Quizzes, Discussions, and Assignments.
- By creating a Canvas Assignment, you are creating an assignment for students and which will automatically create a column in your Canvas Gradebook.
- You can differentiate assignments using assignment settings.
- You can also set up extra credit for assignments.