how to do locked assignments on canvas

Lock an assignment

You can control when students can access or submit an assignment by locking an assignment. Lock an assignment to restrict students from accessing it until the date you set. Or, you can lock submissions to prevent students from submitting assignments after a date you set (e.g. the day after the due date). Note : these steps do not work for discussion assignments.

Lock an assignment :

• In the course navigation, click Assignments , then click on the name of the assignment.

• Under Assign to , choose the section you wish to lock the assignment for. You can also leave it as Everyone .
• Under Available From , enter the earliest date students can access the assignment.
• Under Until , enter the latest date that students can access the assignment. Time of day is optional.
• Click Save or Save & Publish .

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Making Canvas Items Available or Unavailable to Students

Have you ever been confused about how to make sure students can’t access a quiz scheduled for later in the semester, or wanted to make a module available at midnight without having it to publish it manually? This article explains Canvas’s tools for making items like Discussions, Assignments, Quizzes, and Pages visible or invisible to students.

Finding and Understanding Canvas Publication and Availability Settings

You are probably familiar with the publication settings in Canvas, but you might not be familiar with exactly what they do.

• Publish: set the item so that it exists for students. If you publish an item and do not set an “Available” date or put it in a locked module, it will be completely available to students and will appear in the Course Summary and calendar (if it has a due date). Published items have green check-marks to the right when seen in the Modules, Assignments, Discussions, or Quizzes views.
• Unpublished: item is visible to instructors, designers, and administrators, but students cannot tell that it exists. It will not appear in students’ to-do lists, the Course Summary, or the calendar, even if it has a due date set. Students will also not be able to see it in the Gradebook. If you have legacy materials in your course, you want them unpublished; anything that is part of the current course must be published for students to access it. Unpublished items do not have a green checkmark; instead, they display a circle with a line through it.

It’s common for faculty to think these are the only two options (all or nothing). Fortunately, you have many other options for customizing the visibility and release of your items.  Note that you must publish the item for all these options to work.

• Available From: date on which students can access the item if it is published. A published assignment with an “Available” date in the future will show up in students’ calendars and the Course Summary, but they will not have access to it. If your item is unpublished and has an “Available” date, it will  not  become available on the date and will not be visible in the Summary or calendar. You must  publish the item before the “Available” date.
• Until: date on which students can no longer submit the assignment/quiz/discussion. This is not a due date, and students will not receive a reminder. See this Canvas article for more information on “Available” and “Until” dates.

• Lock Until: this option appears only in the module settings. It allows you to lock everything in a module until a specific date. Items in the module  and the module itself  must be published for it to become available on the set date. Even if a given item in the module does not have an Available date set, putting a lock on the module will make the item locked from any access point (e.g., the Assignments area).

There are also two ways to set a date when the item needs to be completed. They work similarly, but the process of setting them differs based on whether the item is graded or not.

• Due Date: date on which a graded  item (assignment, quiz, or graded discussion) is due; this date will display in the Course Summary and students’ calendars
• To-do Date: date on which an ungraded  item (content page or ungraded discussion) is due; this date will display in the Course Summary and students’ calendars

What Is the Best Way to Handle Publication and Availability?

While the exact settings you use may vary based on your course and needs, here is a rule of thumb:

Whenever possible, publish your items and restrict their availability to students using “Available” dates on the items or “Lock Until” dates on the modules.

Why? Primarily, you want students to know what the requirements are, when they’re due, and how they will figure into the gradebook well in advance. This is especially important for major assignments like papers and tests. Secondarily, this method avoids the possibility of forgetting to publish items when you want them to become available. It also allows you to make students aware that items will exist without letting them see that you haven’t yet added the prompts! A published, unavailable assignment serves as an ideal placeholder. If you are concerned about students seeing a test or exam too early, an “Available” date allows you to prevent that.

If you have regular weekly assignments (homework, discussions, reflections, etc) that students know will recur, it’s not a big deal to have those unpublished until the week before.

Deciding Between “Available” Dates and “Lock Until” Dates

“Available” dates are set by item. “Lock Until” dates are set by module, and affect all items that are in the module, but  only  items in the module. If you have a module that is available from September 15, for example, and you have an item that is due that week but is not in the module, its availability will not be affected.

“Available” dates are best if you would like items in a particular module to be accessible at different times. For example, if you have a weekly discussion that you want to include in a module, but you would like to have a student discussant post discussion questions in advance, they will not be able to open that item if it’s in a locked module. If your module does not have a “Lock Until” date, you can make that discussion available a couple of days early and restrict other items until the beginning of the week using “Available” dates.

Using a “Lock Until” date is more efficient to set up and works well as long as no students need access to items in the module earlier. If you use “Lock Until” dates, you may need to leave major assignments out of the modules, which might not be ideal.

In either case, remember that the  whole module  has to be published (you’ll see that green checkmark in the module title bar) in addition to the items being published. From the Modules page, you can publish anything simply by clicking on the circle with the line through it; it will turn into a green check. You can learn about publishing items (link describes assignments, but other item types are the same) and modules in the Canvas resource guide.

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Canvas at Penn

Penn's Source for Courseware Innovation & News

Do You Know Students Can Submit Late Assignments Unless You Use an “Until” Date?

The Do You Know? series provides tips for working with quirks in Canvas. Please email Courseware Support at [email protected] if you have any questions.

Why Does Canvas Let My Students Submit Their Work After the Due Date?

The guiding principle behind this default ability is that decisions about whether or not an assignment should be accepted late is an instructor’s prerogative, so rather than deciding for the instructor that students cannot submit their work after the due date, Canvas leaves the choice about whether or not to accept the late submission up to the instructor, marking it “late” without taking any further action.

If Canvas were to automatically block students from submitting after a due date, allowing extensions would require working with complex settings, and intervention from a Canvas support specialist would most likely be necessary. By accepting late submissions by default, Canvas obviates this need and defers to the instructor’s judgment, letting them manage late submissions according to their personal policies.

Thus if you gave a student an extension, the submission would be marked “late,” but you would be able to grade the submission according to the grading terns you defined for the extension (full credit, partial credit, etc.). If you did not give a student an extension but they submit late anyway, you can decide how or if to grade the submission according to your lateness policy.

I Don’t Give Extensions. Can I Stop Late Submissions?

Yes, in addition to a due date, you can use an “Until” availability date to completely cut off student access to assignments after a certain date, including the ability to submit an assignment.

More Information

Please click on the following link for information and instructions on using availability dates in Canvas:

What is the difference between due dates and availability dates?

Please contact Courseware Support at [email protected] if you have any questions.

Last Updated: 19 Mar 2015

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Canvas @ Yale

• Setting Lock / Availability Dates

Updated on Dec 08, 2021

In Canvas you can control when content is available to students by setting Availability / Lock Dates.

Availability Dates can be set for activities like Assignments and Quizzes, which determine when students can view the item's description as well as submit / engage with the activity.

Lock Dates are set at the Module level and control when students are allowed to access and view content (i.e. files, discussions, assignments, quizzes, etc.), as well as submit / engage with the items within the Module.

It is possible to use both Availability and Lock Dates to limit and control student access and engagement with course content through these date restrictions.

Table of Contents

This article will address the following information:

Lock Dates in Modules

Availability dates in assignments / quizzes.

Locking a Module makes it so that students can see the items in the module, but when they click on an item (i.e. file, assignment, discussion, etc.) the item page will say that the item is locked until the date you set. No specific content information or engagement is available in items that are in a locked Module.

• From the " Modules " page, click on the three dot icon of the module you want to lock.
• Click " Edit ."

• In the pop-up box that opens, check the " Lock Until " box.
• In the Date Selector box, assign the date to unlock the module and make the content in it available to students.
• Click " Update Module ."

Availability Dates in an activity set when students are able to engage in that activity. Students will be able to click onto the item, but will not be able to read any description / instructions of the activity, or complete the activity through actions like submitting a file, taking the exam / quiz, etc.

• From the assignment or quiz description page, click " Edit " in the top-right corner.

• Set the " Available from " and " Until " dates.
• Click " Save " when finished.

For more help, please contact  [email protected] .

Assessments, Feedback and Grades

• Building Assessments in Canvas
• Creating an Assignment
• 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
• 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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