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• Assignment Groups

How Do I Use Assignment Groups in Canvas?

In Canvas, assignment groups allow you to organize your assignments into discrete groups. For example, you may want to group all the essay assignments in your course within one assignment group titled ‘Essays’.

Assignment groups allow you to leverage a weighted grade scheme in your Canvas course. A weighted grade scheme allows you to distribute percentages of a student’s final grade across these assignment groups. Following our previous example, you may want the Essays group to account for 30% of the final grade. 

By default, Grade weighting is turned off for all Canvas courses. To turn on Grade weighting, please follow Canvas’ tutorial for weighting final grades based on Assignment Groups.

How do grade weights get distributed across an Assignment Group?

In Canvas, the weight of an assignment group is distributed proportionally across the assignments inside it. Because of this, assignments worth different points will be weighted differently if they are in the same assignment group.

Here’s an example of an assignment group in Canvas. This group is worth 30% of the total grade and contains three assignments with different point values. The table further below outlines how the assignment group weight of 30% is distributed across the three Assignments.

Here, since Essay Two is out of 200 points, it will count two times more than Essays One and Three.

***assignment group weight distribution for assignments with differing point totals.

If you want all assignments within a given assignment group to be worth the same weight, you have two options:

1. Make all assignments inside an assignment group worth the same number of points, as shown below.

***In this scenario, we have changed Essay Two’s point value from 200 to 100 points. Since all point values in this assignment Group are the same, each Assignment will be worth the same, 10% in this case.

2. Create new assignment groups for any outlier assignments if you cannot or do not want to change their point value.

***In this scenario, we have not changed Essay Two’s point values, so we will need to put it in its own assignment group worth 10% and change the first assignment group to be worth 20% so that all Essays are now worth 10% of the total grade.

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Use Weighted Assignment Groups in Your Canvas Course

by Thomas Keith | Aug 26, 2022 | Canvas , Canvas Features/Functions , How-tos , Pedagogy

Introduction

• Create an Assignment Group

Weight Assignment Groups

Use weighted assignment groups to calculate the total grade, drop a low score from an assignment group, further resources and getting help.

It is good pedagogical practice to maintain a Canvas Gradebook that gives an accurate reflection of your students’ performance. Students frequently consult their grades in Canvas to get a sense of how they are doing in your course and of areas in which they need to improve. You can use weighted Assignment Groups in your Canvas course to help ensure that the grade calculated by Canvas is indicative of students’ actual performance.

Create An Assignment Group

An Assignment Group in Canvas is a means of sorting assignments according to the categories to which they belong in your syllabus. By default, new assignments created in your Canvas course will be added to a catch-all group called Assignments . (Note that “assignments” in this context refers to anything that is graded; this can be an Assignment proper, a Quiz, or a graded Discussion.)

You can create a new Assignment Group by going to the Assignments tab in your course and clicking the gray +Group button at the upper right.

It is a good idea to give your group a name that reflects the assessment categories on your syllabus. For example, if the group contains quizzes that are given each week of the quarter, you might call it Weekly Quizzes .

Once a group has been created, there are two ways to add assignments to it:

Assignment Groups are most useful when used to weight grades. With weighted Assignment Groups, you can make the organization of your assignments in Canvas match the organization used on your syllabus. You also have greater flexibility than is offered by weighting each individual assignment: if an assignment needs to be dropped or added, you can simply remove it from/add it to the appropriate assignment group, and Canvas will automatically recalculate the final grade accordingly.

For the remainder of this post, we will use as an example a course in which the grading is as follows:

• Five short quizzes: 20% of the final grade
• One midterm exam: 30% of the final grade
• One final exam: 40% of the final grade
• Attendance and participation: 10% of the final grade

To begin, the instructor creates four assignment groups, named Short Quizzes , Midterm , Final Exam , and Attendance and Participation .

She then clicks the column of three dots at the upper right and chooses Assignment Groups Weight .

She then checks the box next to Weight final grade based on assignment groups . This allows her to set the percentage weight for each assignment group.

Note that Canvas shows the instructor that the assignment groups add up to 100%. It is important to check this, as Canvas will not stop you if your groups add up to less than or greater than 100%.

Once the instructor has weighted her groups to her satisfaction, she clicks the maroon Save button. Canvas then indicates across from each assignment group’s name the percentage value of the total grade that it carries.

The instructor can now create her assignments and add them to the appropriate assignment groups by one of the two methods enumerated above.

An important caveat: If an assignment group contains more than one assignment, it is important that all assignments have the same point value for Canvas’ math to work out correctly. This avoids the risk of “double weighting,” which will occur if assignments within a group have different point values. For example: if a quiz worth 5 points and a quiz worth 50 points are placed in the same assignment group, the latter quiz will be worth ten times as much in Canvas’ calculations, which will greatly skew the result. In our example course, the instructor has avoided this risk by creating five quizzes within the Short Quizzes group, each of which is worth three points.

The Midterm and Final Exam groups each contain only one assignment. This can be an assignment of type Online Assignment if the instructor wishes her students to submit it through Canvas, or it can be an assignment of type On Paper if students will hand in a physical exam paper.

For the Attendance and Participation group, the instructor creates an assignment of type No Submission .

Remember that in Canvas, there is a one-to-one correspondence between assignments and columns in the Gradebook. Thus, if you wish to create a column for (e.g.) students’ attendance/participation grade, it is necessary to create a corresponding assignment. By making it of type No Submission , the instructor has ensured that students do not need to hand in any work, while still creating a Gradebook column where the grade is recorded.

Note also that if students need to submit work that will not be graded, such as an outline for an upcoming paper, you can create an assignment of submission type Online Assignment and check the box Do not count this assignment toward the final grade in the assignment options area.

Using weighted assignment groups allows Canvas to do your math for you. A column will appear in the Gradebook for each assignment group. The Total column will be calculated by multiplying the value of each column by its percentage weight and adding the results. In the case of the student below, the grade is calculated as follows:

Short Quizzes: 12 out of 15 possible points = 80 * 0.2 = 16

Midterm Exam: 90 out of 100 possible points = 90*0.3 = 27

Final Exam: 80 out of 100 possible points = 80*0.4 = 32

Attendance and Participation: 100 out of 100 possible points = 100*0.1 = 10

Total: 16+27+32+10 = 85

If you wish, you can set an assignment group to drop one or more low scores (or high scores) automatically. To do this, go to the group within the Assignments tab and click on the column of three dots across from its name to open a dialog box. Then enter the number of low or high scores you wish to drop and click Save .

You can also specify that an assignment should never be dropped by clicking the blue +Add an assignment link next to Never drop: and choosing its name from the drop-down that appears.

For more information, please see:

• How do I weight the final course grade based on assignment groups?
• How do I create rules for an assignment group?

If you have additional questions, Academic Technology Solutions is here to help. You can attend our workshops to learn more about Canvas and other tools for teaching with technology. You can also drop into our Office Hours (virtual and in-person) to ask any questions you may have; no appointment is required.

(Cover Photo by Piret Ilver on Unsplash )

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Student collaboration with canvas groups.

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Collaboration is an important part of the learning process.  Positive group experiences have been shown to increase student engagement, retention, and overall academic success (Palloff & Pratt, 2005).  By working together with their peers, students can exercise a host of foundational skills that can be applied to the real world and reinforce skills relevant to their coursework (Flaherty, 2022).   In a collaborative learning environment, knowledge is exchanged among students as they search for information, discuss, and share options. 

Although working in groups is beneficial, it can be difficult to keep track of everything happening within the team.  Having a shared space to communicate, collect resources, share knowledge and opinions, and work together to produce a final product or presentation is key.  Canvas Groups offers a great solution for this.  

Canvas Groups are collaborative work spaces, essentially a mini-site within your Canvas course,  where students can work together on projects and assignments.  Students can be placed into groups manually or randomly distribute students across any number of groups.  Each Canvas Group will have full access to many of the same tools found in Canvas course sites, including Announcements, Collaborations, Discussions, Files, and Pages.  

Setting Up Canvas Group Workspaces 

Canvas Groups provides a variety of options for setting up your student groups, allowing you to choose what works best for your course, students, and particular assignment.  The first option is to manually create groups and assign students to them yourself.  This works great if you have a smaller class size and/or would like to be strategic in creating groups.  The second option is to have Canvas automatically create groups and distribute students evenly among those groups.  Finally, the third option is to create a specific number of groups and then allow students to self select their groups .  Canvas Groups also allows you to set a group leader for each group .  Having roles within a group provides structure and distributes responsibility among group members.  This helps to ensure all students are taking an active role within the team.   

Group Communication

Communication is very often a trouble spot for groups.  Students commonly complain they struggle to communicate with one another when working on group projects.  Canvas Groups provides a simple, streamlined way for students to communicate with members of their group.  Within their Canvas Group workspace, students can send out Announcements to the entire group and create discussion boards. They can also message individual members of the group, if needed.  Instructors can also send messages to specific groups and check-in on each group’s progress by accessing the group’s workspace.  In addition, students can also create Pages, share Files, and create collaborative Google documents through Collaborations, making it easier for them to collaborate on tasks.  

Creating Group Assignments and Discussions

You can create both Canvas Assignments and Discussions using the groups you create in your course. If you create a group Canvas Assignment , students can work together on the assignment and then submit it as a group. Only one student has to submit the assignment on behalf of the group. When grading a group assignment , you can assign a grade and provide feedback comments to the entire group in Speedgrader. You also have the option to assign grades to each student individually. With this option, you can enter a grade for each individual member of the group, and you can choose to send feedback comments to the individual student or the whole group. This is a good option if you plan to adjust students’ grades to reflect their individual contributions to the assignment. For example, you can create a peer evaluation for students to provide feedback on their group members’ contributions and use this feedback when grading. 

You can also set up group discussions in Canvas. When you create a group Canvas Discussion, Canvas will create a copy of the discussion board prompt so that students interact with their smaller groups instead of the entire class. This is a great feature if you have a larger class since discussions with a lot of students can become overwhelming, which leads to students all replying to the same one or two posts. Creating smaller group discussions can be less overwhelming for students as they have fewer posts to read and respond to. Students will only be able to see their group’s discussion, so it can be helpful to send out an announcement to the class after the due date to share common themes or interesting points you noticed across all discussion groups. 

Canvas Groups makes it simple to create opportunities for collaboration that will foster student engagement with your course material. If you are interested in exploring Canvas Groups further, request a consultation with the LSA Learning and Teaching Consultants .  

References:

Flaherty, H. B. (2022). Using collaborative group learning principles to foster community in online classrooms. Journal of Teaching in Social Work, 42(1), 31-44. https://doi.org/10.1080/08841233.2021.2013390  

Palloff, R. M., & Pratt, K. (2005). Collaborating online: Learning together in community. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

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Getting Started with Groups in Canvas

• Last modification date Updated On February 16, 2022
• Categories: Canvas , Groups
• Categories: collaboration , communication , content differentiation , Getting Started

Canvas  Groups  are a way for instructors to organize students within a course for group assignments, group discussions, or other collaborative work. The Groups tool creates course-like areas in Canvas that include the following navigational options:

• Announcements
• Discussions
• BigBlueButton (Formerly Conferences)
• Collaborations

Managing Group Sets

Managing groups, managing group enrollment, managing group activities & content.

A  Group Set  is a collection of groups. A new Group Set is needed for every assignment that calls for a new grouping of students. When getting started with Group Sets, learn to:

• Create a Group Set with the Canvas guide  How do I add a group set in a course?
• Edit a Group Set with the Canvas guide  How do I edit a group set in a course?

Do not delete a group set after submissions have been made by any group in that set.

Use unique group names in order to ensure students can identify which course the group is from, as all of their groups are listed in a single place outside of the course.

Do not delete a group after a submission has been made by that group.

Groups  are the specific groupings of students within a Group Set.  When getting started with Groups, learn to:

• Automatically create groups in a group set with the Canvas guide  How do I automatically create groups in a group set?
• Manually create groups in a group set with the Canvas guide  How do I manually create groups in a group set?
• Create self sign-up groups in a group set with the Canvas guide  How do I create self sign-up groups in a group set?
• Allow students to create groups with the Canvas guide  How do I allow students to create their own student groups?

Students can only belong to one group in a group set. This precludes them from taking part in group work or group discussions in Canvas in multiple groups for the same assignment/activity.

Do not change membership in a group after a submission has been made by that group.

When enrolling students in Groups, learn to:

• Automatically enroll students in groups with the Canvas guide  How do I automatically assign students to groups?
• Manually enroll students in groups with the Canvas guide  How do I manually assign students to groups?
• Assign a student leader to a group with the Canvas guide  How do I assign a student leader to a group?
• Change group enrollments with the Canvas guide  How do I move a student into a different group?
• Prevent students from changing self sign-up group enrollment with the Canvas guide  How do I prevent students from switching groups in self sign-up groups?

While students can manage their Group spaces in Canvas, instructors are able to generate activities for groups and view group content. When managing group activities and content, learn to:

• Grade Group Assignments in the SpeedGrader with the Canvas guide  How do I grade group assignments in SpeedGrader?
• Create a graded Group Discussion with the Canvas guide  How do I assign a graded discussion to a course group?
• View a group’s files with the Canvas guide  How do I view group files as an instructor?
• View a group’s content and student group activity with the Canvas guide  How do I view content and student activity within a group as an instructor?

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Copy a Canvas Course that Uses Delphinium

The steps you should follow if the content for your current course will be copied from another course that uses Delphinium.

Copyleaks - Plagiarism Detection Tool

An overview of Copyleaks, the university's official plagiarism detection tool. How Copyleaks works and a summary of the AI detection feature.

Create Annotation Assignment in Canvas

How to create an annotation assignment in your Canvas course using Hypothesis tool.

Create a Canvas Course Homepage with Design Tools

How to create an appealing Canvas course homepage with Design Tools Plus. How to add a theme, change course number & title, add a module list, change banner image, and add instructor information.

How to create an appealing Canvas course homepage with Design Tools. How to add a theme, change course number & title, add a module list, change banner image, and add instructor information.

Create a Canvas Quiz for Virtual Proctoring using Proctorio

How to enable Proctorio in a Canvas course, activate proctorio in a Canvas quiz, and making adjustments to a Proctorio quiz after students have taken the exam.

Create a Google Assignment in Canvas

There is a Google workaround in Canvas where you can create a template for your students to use as an assignment.

Create a Page Template with Design Tools

How to create a Canvas template with Design Tools by choosing a theme; add, remove, or rearrange sections; adding icons; and changing the theme colors

Create a Page Template with DesignPLUS

How to create a page template with DesignPLUS. How to add a theme, how to add, rearrange, or remove content blocks, how to add and remove template content.

Create a Plagiarism Detection Assignment with Copyleaks

How to enable Copyleaks to create a plagiarism detection assignment in Canvas. How Copyleaks reports appear and how to interpret the results. What students see when an assignment is submitted.

Create a Quiz in Canvas (Classic Quizzes)

You can use the Quiz tool to create and administer online quizzes and surveys. Quizzes in Canvas are assignments that you can use to challenge student understanding and assess comprehension of course material.

Create a Quiz with New Quizzes

How to create a new quiz using the Canvas New Quizzes and a brief explanation of the differences with the Canvas Classic quizzes

Create a Rubric in Canvas

The purpose of using a rubric is to focus students' attention on critical components of an assignment and to help the instructor maintain consistency when grading.

Create an Assignment in Canvas

Assignments in Canvas are used to assess students with a point value, percentage, or complete status, or as a place for students to submit non-graded activities. These are sometimes known as an assignment dropbox or assignment inbox.

Create an Extra Credit Assignment

Canvas doesn't allow extra credit questions by default, but you can use these workaround to achieve the desired result.

Create an Office 365 Assignment

You can create an online assignment that embeds a document directly from your Microsoft Office 365 (OneDrive) folder. Accepted assignment types are Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and Excel.

Create, Edit, and Remove Tabs

Delphinium is organized by theme and function through the use of tabs. These are the steps you can take to customize the tabs.

Creating a Canvas Assignment for Your Video Quiz

You can create a Canvas assignment for a video quiz that you created through My Media. You will need to do this if you would like it to be added to the gradebook.

Creating a Syllabus Using DesignPLUS

How to create a Syllabus using DesignPLUS. How to add a theme, edit content blocks, edit icons, add a Canvas Grading Scheme, Add Institutional Policies, and Add Objectives/Outcomes.

Creating a Syllabus in Canvas

The course syllabus is an agreement between the instructor and his or her students to establish the rules of engagement for the course and what is required of students for them to receive credit for the course.

Customizing Assignments, Discussions and Quizzes in a Canvas Template

As you begin to add your own content to your course, it’s important to keep things organized so your course is easy to update and maintain moving forward.

Customizing the Canvas Dashboard

Customize your Canvas dashboard to easily access the courses you use most frequently.

Delphinium Achievements

Delphinium has an Achievement component where students can earn different badges for completing specific tasks. These badges will then be displayed in the leaderboards where all can see.

Delphinium Box Module Component Advanced Settings

The Box Content Map can be customized to better cater to the instructors preferences by organizing the course modules into tabs. Below you will find the instructions on how to create those tabs as well as in-depth explanations which can help you as you tr...

Delphinium Box Module Component

The Box Content Map is a quick and easy visual layout that displays the entire course content at a glance. You can customize this component to make it easier for your students to navigate the course.

Delphinium Components

In the Delphinium Layout Editor, components are represented by "Component Tiles". Components are grouped into the following categories: Content, Progress, Dashboard, Game Elements, and Description.

Delphinium Grade Scheme

If you are using 0-based grading, Delphinium will translate the %-based Canvas grading scheme into a point-based grading scheme.

Delphinium Grade Tracker Component

The Grade Tracker component displays a student's current progress in earning points in the course grading scheme. Points are earned by completing course assignments.

Delphinium Layout Customization

After you choose a template that you would like to work with, Delphinium allows you to do additional customizations to the layout and interface. How to add components, remove components, and create columns.

Discussion Post with Embedded Video in Canvas

How to post or embed a webcam recording as a discussion reply in a Canvas discussion board.

Download Class Email Roster

You can download a report in New Analytics that contains your class email roster, which allows you to email your students before or after the semester.

Download a Video in My Media

You can download a recording from the Media Gallery in a Canvas course. The first step is to make sure that the video has been enabled for downloading.

Duplicate a Canvas Classic Quiz

Duplicating a quiz is a good way to make modifications to an existing quiz while maintaining the original within the same course.

Early Course Access for Students in Canvas

An explanation of settings in a Canvas course to allow students access to designated content before the start date of the semester.

Editing Component Contents

Delphinium provides many components that instructors can include on their page to make their course more interactive. This is how to edit those components to best suit each instructor's preferences.

Embed Editable Google Item in Canvas

You may embed an editable Google Doc, Sheet, or Slide into your Canvas course where your students can interact with and update the item according to your instructions.

Embed a Video in Canvas

No matter where you are embedding a video, whether for a Discussion, Announcement, Page, or Assignment, the best way to embed a video in your Canvas course is through your My Media repository.

Embed a Video in a Canvas Announcement

Step-by-step guide on how to embed a video recording into an announcement in your Canvas course.

Embed a Video in a Canvas Page

To embed a video recording in a Canvas course page, follow these instructions.

Embedding Images to Canvas

Instructions for embedding an image from your computer onto a Canvas page with written steps and a video tutorial.

Enable Delphinium

Enable Delphinium as a tool within your Canvas course on the navigation settings.

Enable a Canvas Grading Scheme

If you want to see a letter grade on the Grades page, or if you want to submit grades directly from Canvas to Banner you need to enable the course grading scheme.

Extend Quiz Date for Students in Canvas

How to extend a due date for students in your Canvas course, whether it is for a singular student or multiple students.

Extra Credit for Individual Quiz Questions

Canvas doesn't allow extra credit questions by default, but you can use this work around to achieve the desired result.

Find, Add, or Remove Courses in Canvas

How to add or remove courses from Canvas dashboard and course list. Additionally, how to find previously taught courses or troubleshooting why courses aren't appearing in Courses tab.

Five Keys to Grading in Canvas

The methods for addressing potential grading issues when using the Canvas grade book.

Flip in Canvas (Formerly FlipGrid)

Flip is a video discussion platform that makes teaching and learning more personal, fun, and engaging. This page goes over how to set up Flip in Canvas and how to create a Flip assignment.

Frequently Asked Questions and Common Mistakes in Canvas

The most common questions asked and mistakes made by USU instructors when they use Canvas for the first time.

Full Design Tools User Guide in Canvas

USU Design Tools are some tools within Canvas that allow you to quickly build and style a course in Canvas.

General Canvas Gradebook Help

How to adjust and navigate through the major features in the Canvas grade book.

General Education Outcomes - Quiz with Question Bank

If you teach a general education course, you have likely been asked to assess whether students are meeting specific outcomes. Canvas can make the reporting of those outcomes easier. There are two ways to measure the outcomes.

General Education Outcomes—Assignment with Rubric

Instructions to attach a rubric to an assignment for assessing general education outcomes in general education courses.

Getting Started with DesignPLUS in Canvas

How to switch between Design Tools and Design PLUS and how to switch back. Options in Design Plus, including Edit Current Element, Add New Elements, Accessibility/Usability, User Guides/Tutorials, and More Options.

Giving Students Time Extensions with New Quizzes

How to allow students extra time when taking quizzes or exams using the New Quizzes feature in Canvas.

Grade Posting Policy vs. Hide Grades

The grade posting policy determines whether grades that are yet to be entered will be shown to students. The Hide Grades feature will hide grades that have already been entered, while new grades will still show.

Graded Discussions in Canvas

How to analyze and review graded discussions in Canvas for all of your courses at Utah State University.

Grading Assignments in Canvas

The Assignments page is arguably the most central to Canvas’s operation. In this page you'll learn of the various features that are associated with grading an assignment in Canvas.

Grading and Syncing with iClicker Cloud

In order to enable grading and syncing with iClicker Cloud, you'll need to follow the instructions below.

Group Discussions in Canvas

How to get your students to participate in group discussions on Canvas and how you can effectively review and grade your students.

How to Grade a Hypothesis Assignment in Canvas

How to grade Hypothesis annotation assignments using the Canvas SpeedGrader.

How to Grade a New Quiz

How teachers can grade quizzes that were created with the Canvas New Quizzes feature.

How to Integrate Zoom into Canvas

How to integrate and activate the Zoom tool into your Canvas course side navigation.

How to Log Into Canvas

All USU students, faculty, and staff have access to Canvas and can log on to Canvas at canvas.usu.edu.

How to Simplify Your Navigation in Canvas

Walkthrough on how to simplify your Canvas course navigation to be more user-friendly and enhance the overall student experience.

How to Use Canvas Course Templates

CIDI has developed two templates to help you organize your course materials and provide a consistent experience for students across USU.

Hypothesis: Canvas Annotation Assignment Tool

Hypothesis is a Canvas integrated tool that allows you to collaborate and annotate most online sources.

Import Content from Another Canvas Course

Getting ready for the new semester and have content from this semester you'd like to reuse? Great! You can import content from another Canvas course.

Import a Quiz from Another Canvas Course

You can import specific content from one Canvas course to another, if you are a Teacher, TA, or Course Designer of both courses.

Importing Content into Canvas On-Demand Workshop

This on-demand workshop walks you through how to properly import content from one Canvas course into another and what things you need to review and consider before beginning your course for the semester.

Importing Grades Into Canvas Using a Spreadsheet

Sometimes grades are collected using another source, such as i>clicker, scantron tests, and publisher websites. Or you may just prefer to organize your grades on a spreadsheet.

Layout Coach Setting Descriptions

Within Delphinium the Layout Coach will walk you through all of these settings. This page serves as a reference to be able to see descriptions of all settings at once.

Make Feedback Unavailable to Students Until Grading is Complete in Canvas

The instructions required to make grades, comments, and annotations unavailable until grading is complete and grades are manually posted.

Manage Question Banks

Why, when, and how to use question banks in your Utah State University Canvas course quizzes.

Managing Outcomes in Canvas New Quizzes

The steps to manage outcomes with the new system in the New Quizzes tool in Canvas.

Manually Graded Canvas Quiz Question Types and Risks

Different methods of manually graded Canvas quizzes, how to implement them, and suggestions on managing the complex problems that arise with them.

Mastery Paths in Canvas

Mastery Paths allows you to customize learning experiences for students based on performance. You can enable Mastery Paths to automatically assign coursework based on the score achieved for a previous assignment.

Message All Students Within a Grade Range in Canvas

New Analytics in Canvas allows you to filter outgoing messages to send to your students that fall within a specific grade range.

Moderate Quiz Option in Canvas

How to extend time limit for students and give extra attempts on quizzes and exams through the Canvas Moderate Quiz setting.

New Quizzes Overview

An overview of the Canvas New Quizzes tool which provides additional question types and tools that are not available in Classic Quizzes.

Notification Preferences in Canvas

Suggestions for setting Canvas notifications to determine how often you will receive alerts about new assignment submissions, submission comments, etc.

Online Essay Exams and Quizzes

Suggestions for setting up online essay question types in Canvas exams and quizzes for enhanced security.

Open My Media

The easiest way to open your My Media repository is from your Canvas dashboard.

Prepare for Final Grading in Canvas

You have successfully used Canvas to grade all the assignments in your class, now you can save some time by submitting your grades directly to Banner.

Print a Canvas Syllabus

If you have used the Design Tools or Canvas formatting to prepare your syllabus in Canvas, the easiest way to print a properly formatted syllabus is from the USU Canvas Course Syllabus Tracker.

Proctored, Automatically Graded & Time-Restricted Canvas Quizzes (most secure)

Curated list of Canvas quiz questions that are automatically graded along with different proctoring options and how to implement them.

Quizzes Overview

An introduction of the various options for quizzing using tools available through Canvas.

Replace the Instructor Photo on Your Home Page

Instructions on replacing the instructor photo on your Canvas course home page using design tools.

Restore Deleted Content in Canvas

Previously saved content can be restored if it gets accidentally deleted. This includes assignments, classic quizzes, pages, etc.

Reusing Your Course in Canvas

If you already taught a course once in Canvas, this page is to help you understand how you can best reuse and refine that course to have a successful time teaching your new incoming students.

Scheduling a Meeting in Zoom

How to set up a Zoom meeting within Canvas, outside of Canvas, and how to invite guest speakers.

Share Screen Recording in a Discussion

How to post or embed a Kaltura screen recording as a discussion reply in a Canvas discussion board.

Share Zoom Link with Class

Share a Zoom link that can be accessed by all students in the class through Canvas.

Student Self Evaluation in Canvas

The instructions below will show you how to create a self evaluation for your students based on a rubric outline that you have for your assignment.

Student View (Periscope)

Periscope view allows the instructor to see what a specific student will see when he logs into Delphinium.

Switch Between Design Tools and DesignPLUS in Canvas

How to switch between Design Tools and DesignPLUS. Also, how to switch back to Design Tools from DesignPLUS in Canvas.

Syncing Canvas Calendar to Outlook or Google Calendars

How to sync your Canvas Calendar with either your Microsoft Outlook or Google Calendar accounts.

Testing Center - Proctoring Accommodations

Make accommodations to allow your student(s) to take an exam or quiz with Proctorio while the rest of your students take the exam or quiz in a testing center. Instructions to make the exam flexible in Canvas with the Moderate This Quiz feature.

TidyUP Canvas Content Cleanup Tool

TidyUP is available in your Canvas course to help you quickly identify and clean up the content in your course.

Time Restricted and Automatically Graded Canvas Quizzes

Descriptions of the automatically graded questions types associated with a time-restricted and automatically graded quiz.

Transfer Canvas Classic Quiz to New Quizzes

Transferring a classic Canvas quiz into the New Quizzes format to take advantage of new question types.

Universal Design Resources for Canvas

Dr. John Scott of Blackboard gave the following workshop in fall of 2019 at Utah State University on how to better support diverse online learners as part of the 2019 Ally Road Tour.

Update Active Dates for Modules to Display in Canvas

How to add dates to the module list on your Canvas homepage to highlight and open the most current module.

Update Content Pages in Canvas Templates

Instructions for how to update Canvas content pages using the Design Tools. Change the unit, content title, etc in the template using the side bar.

Update Date References in Canvas Module Titles

If you have previously typed dates to appear in your module titles in your homepage, you'll want to update them through the Multi Tool.

Update Home Page Module Dates in Design Tools

How to update the dates for the modules on the home page by using the features on design tools.

Update the Visual Template Home Page

The Visual Template comes with a pre-styled homepage containing a general university image and replaceable banner text. Be sure to change the course number and title. Changing the image is optional.

Upgrade Legacy Design Content with DesignPLUS

How to upgrade the content designed with the legacy (Design Tools) sidebar to utilize DesignPLUS formatting.

Uploading Files to Canvas

The basics of adding a file to a Canvas course either in the Files tool or within a module.

Using Any Grading Scenario in Canvas

How to convert your Canvas gradebook to a CSV file to import into Excel to calculate a custom final grade.

View Copyleaks Reports in Canvas as an Instructor

How to view a student's Copyleaks report through the SpeedGrader and Grading. How to review the matching sources of a plagiarism detection report using Copyleaks.

View Student A-Numbers on Canvas Grades Page

Canvas allows the option to change which identifying information an instructor sees for a student.

Viewing an Attendance Report in Zoom

Tutorials for generating attendance reports, which are available through the Zoom link in Canvas or through the Zoom website. If the meeting recurrence is set for "no fixed time" you will have to pull the reports from the Zoom website.

University Center for Teaching and Learning

How to create assignments for your canvas course.

• Quick Start
• Instructor Help
• Student Help

How to Create Assignments

Using assignments in Canvas provides a streamlined process for assigning homework and creating quizzes for students.  Canvas considers an ‘assignment’ to be anything that is graded, whether that be a quiz or homework assignment, and whether it’s delivered entirely online, paper-and-pencil, or is a participatory assignment with no actual deliverable.

This Quick Start guide will cover the creation of assignments where the student submits a file electronically, on paper, using an external tool such as Turnitin or Panopto , or where no submission is expected (e.g. class participation). See How to Create Tests and Quizzes for Your Canvas Course and Create and Manage Discussions for more information about using those tools as assignments.

1. In the Course Navigation menu, click the Assignments link.

2. Click “ +Assignment ” at the top right.

3. Write the assignment title and directions for students.

4. Assign the number of points available for the assignment.

5. Choose an “ Assignment Group” . Assignment groups are, in essence, a category of assignment. For more information about using Assignment Groups, see the Canvas guides regarding Assignments.

6. There are four submission types :

• No Submission: an activity where nothing will be collected from students (e.g. a participation grade)
• For the full details about the online assignment subtypes, (text entry, annotation, file upload, etc.), please see the official documentation .
• We have a recorded mini-webinar on annotation assignments, including assignment ideas, available on the Training Webinars page.
• On Paper: assignments/quizzes/activities that were written on paper and collected by the instructor
• External Tool: assignments submitted through a 3rd party tool that is integrated with Canvas, such as a textbook publisher’s website or Turnitin

7. Submission Attempts: You may allow unlimited submission attempts for Online assignments, or restrict attempts to one or more. When a student submits to an assignment they have already submitted to, the previous submission is retained as well, and the instructor may view both.

8. Group Assignments and Peer Reviews:  Assignments can be created as either a group assignment or peer review assignment.

9. Assign options- You can assign an assignment to your entire class, a specific student, and/or a section of your class. You can also set the due date and the availability dates (when your students can submit their assignment). Each section can have different due dates and availability dates.

10. If you are finished creating the assignment, click on “ Save & Publish “. If you are not finished creating the assignment, click on “ Save ” and you may come back and work on it more later without students having access to it.

Instructor Help for Assignments

Creating assignments.

• How do I create an assignment?
• How do I add a moderated assignment to be graded by multiple reviewers?
• How do I create an online assignment?
• How do I add or edit details in an assignment?
• How do I add or edit points for an assignment?
• What assignment types can I create in a course?
• How do I limit submission attempts for an assignment?
• How do I add an assignment that includes anonymous grading?
• How do I enable anonymous instructor annotations in student submissions?
• How do I import SCORM files as an assignment?
• How do I publish or unpublish an assignment as an instructor?

Managing Assignments

• How do I use the Assignments Index Page?
• Can a student resubmit Canvas assignments?
• How do I assign an assignment to everyone in a course?
• How do I assign an assignment to a course group?
• How do I assign an assignment to a course section?
• How do I assign an assignment to an individual student?
• How do I view differentiated assignments with different due dates in a course?
• How do I bulk update due dates and availability dates as an instructor?
• How do I delete an assignment?
• How do I duplicate an assignment?
• How do I move or reorder an assignment?
• How do I use Direct Share to copy an assignment to another course?
• How do I use Direct Share to send an assignment to another instructor?

Creating and Managing Peer Review Assignments

• How do I create a peer review assignment?
• How do I use peer review assignments in a course?
• How do I automatically assign peer reviews for an assignment?
• How do I manually assign peer reviews for an assignment?
• How do I view student peer review comments as an instructor?

Creating External Tool Assignments

• How do I add an assignment using an external app?
• How do I create a cloud assignment with a Microsoft Office 365 file?

Using Assignment Groups

• How do I add an assignment group in a course?
• How do I create an assignment shell in an assignment group?
• How do I create rules for an assignment group?
• How do I move or reorder an assignment group?
• How do I weight the final course grade based on assignment groups?

Grading Considerations

• How do I add a grading scheme to an assignment?
• How do I download all student submissions for an assignment?
• How do I upload all student submissions for an assignment?
• How do I exclude an assignment from the course’s final grades?
• How do I give extra credit in a course?

Student Help for Assignments

• How do I view Assignments as a student?
• How do I filter assignments by type as a student?
• How do I submit an online assignment?
• How do I submit a text entry assignment?
• How do I enter a URL as an assignment submission?
• How do I submit a media file as an assignment submission?
• How do I upload a file as an assignment submission in Canvas?
• How do I upload a file from Microsoft Office 365 as an assignment submission?
• How do I know when my assignment has been submitted?
• How do I manage celebration animations in Canvas as a student?
• How do I submit a cloud assignment with Microsoft Office 365?
• How do I download assignment submissions from all my courses?
• How do I annotate a file as an assignment submission in Canvas?
• How do I use DocViewer in Canvas assignments as a student?
• How do I submit a PDF assignment with annotations in the Student app on my Android device?
• How do I add annotations to a submission in the Student app on my iOS device?

Groups and Peer

• How do I submit an assignment on behalf of a group?
• How do I know if I have a peer review assignment to complete?
• How do I submit a peer review to an assignment?
• Where can I find my peers’ feedback for peer reviewed assignments?
• How do I view the rubric for my assignment?
• How do I view the rubric for my external tool assignment?
• How do I view rubric results for my assignment?
• How do I know when my instructor has graded my assignment?
• How do I view assignment comments from my instructor?
• How do I view annotation feedback comments from my instructor directly in my assignment submission?
• How do I view my Roll Call Attendance report as a student?
• Generative AI Resources for Faculty
• Importing Grades from Canvas to PeopleSoft
• Enter and Calculate Grades in Canvas
• End-of-term Teaching Surveys
• Finals Week Assessment Strategies
• Alternative Final Assessment Ideas
• Testing Services Hours During Finals
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• Accessibility
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• Center for Mentoring
• Creating and Using Video
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• Graduate Student/TA Resources
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• About the Executive Director
• Award Nomination Form
• Award Recipients
• About the Teaching Center
• Annual Report
• Join Our Team

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Canvas at Penn

Penn's Source for Courseware Innovation & News

Canvas Production Release Notes: April 2o, 2024

Canvas operates on a monthly release cycle through which features are added or updated. Courseware Support posts highlights from Canvas’s production release notes, a link to these notes, and other relevant content to the Canvas at Penn a few days before the production release, which usually occurs on Saturdays. Please contact Courseware Support at [email protected] if you have any questions about an upcoming production release.

April 20, 2024 Production Release Highlights

New features:.

• Archive Grading Schemes At the account and course-level, the Grading Schemes page interface is redesigned. Additionally, admins and instructors can archive grading schemes as well as edit the name and description of grading schemes currently in use.  See the release notes for details.

Feature Options:

• Essay and File Upload- Score distribution chart, CSV support
• Numeric-Answer Frequency Summary, Aggregation and CSV support

New Quizzes is currently an opt-in feature. Contact [email protected] if you’re interested in enabling it.

For a complete production release update, please see:

Canvas Production Release Notes: April 20, 2024

Last Updated: 18 Apr 2024

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Study: Alphabetical order of surnames may affect grading

By Jeff Karoub Michigan News

Knowing your ABCs is essential to academic success, but having a last name starting with A, B or C might also help make the grade.

An analysis by University of Michigan researchers of more than 30 million grading records from U-M finds students with alphabetically lower-ranked names receive lower grades. This is due to sequential grading biases and the default order of students’ submissions in Canvas — the most widely used online learning management system — which is based on alphabetical rank of their surnames.

more information

• 30 Million Canvas Grading Records Reveal Widespread Sequential Bias and System-Induced Surname Initial Disparity (Submitted for review)

What’s more, the researchers found, those alphabetically disadvantaged students receive comments that are notably more negative and less polite, and exhibit lower grading quality measured by post-grade complaints from students.

“We spend a lot of time thinking about how to make the grading fair and accurate but even for me it was really surprising,” said Jun Li, associate professor of technology and operations at the Stephen M. Ross School of Business. “It didn’t occur to us until we looked at the data and realized that sequence makes a difference.”

Li co-authored the study with doctoral students Jiaxin Pei from the School of Information and Helen (Zhihan) Wang from Ross. It is under review by the journal Management Science.

The researchers collected available historical data of all programs, students and assignments on Canvas from the fall 2014 semester to the summer 2022 semester. They supplemented the Canvas data with university registrar data, which contains detailed information about students’ backgrounds, demographics and learning trajectories at the university.

Although the data is from U-M, the researchers say the findings can be generalized across institutions and courses. They are driven by a common design issue of learning-management systems — the default setting of ranking students’ assignments alphabetically by their names.

Their research uncovered a clear pattern of a decline in grading quality as graders evaluate more assignments. Wang said students whose surnames start with A, B, C, D or E received a 0.3-point higher grade out of 100 possible points than compared with when they were graded randomly. Likewise, students with later-in-the-alphabet surnames received a 0.3-point lower grade — creating a 0.6-point gap.

Wang noted that for a small group of graders (about 5%) that grade from Z to A, the grade gap flips as expected: A-E students are worse off, while W-Z students receive higher grades relative to what they would receive when graded randomly. The researchers said such observations confirm their hypothesis that it’s the order of grading that leads to the initial gap in grades.

A 0.6-point difference might seem small, but such a disparity did affect students’ course grade-point averages, which negatively influences opportunities in their respective career paths.

“Our conclusion is this may be something that happened unconsciously by the graders that’s actually creating a real social impact,” Wang said.

Pei said the idea for the study came up during a discussion he had with Wang in which they were talking about their research: Wang studies educational technology and he studies artificial intelligence. He observed that a fundamental task of machine learning is data labeling, also a sequential task that can be long and tedious, but one that is randomized.

It got them thinking about educational systems like Canvas and led to some pilot studies to see if there was any disparity among grades based on the amount of time spent in the task of grading.

“We kind of suspect that fatigue is one of the major factors that is driving this effect, because when you’re working on something for a long period of time, you get tired and then you start to lose your attention and your cognitive abilities are dropping,” Pei said.

The researchers note the option exists to grade the assignments in a random order, and some educators do, but alphabetical order is the default mode in Canvas and other online learning-management systems. One simple fix would be to make random order the default setting.

They also suggest academic institutions could hire more graders for larger classes, distribute the workload among more people or train them to be aware of and lessen the bias while grading.

Li, Wang and Pei have been sharing their research at conferences and it’s been positively received — many are impressed by their work although it confirms suspicions many harbor. One reaction in particular stands out to Li, no doubt an information-age wrinkle on “the dog ate my homework” excuse.

“A college student emailed us afterward asking us to share the paper with him,” she said. “He mentioned that his last name started with W. He’s going to tell his parents it’s not because of him — it’s because of his last name.”

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Edward Williams

In addition to grading in random order, I think it helpful to thoroughly prepare an answer-&-grading key BEFORE opening any assignments or tests for grading. For example, “4 points for each part of this problem;” “-2 points for this specific error.”

John Dinkel

So is this proof that students’ work should not be graded in randumb order!

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