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Canvas Assignment

Canvas Assignments are a good option for assessments that require file submissions.

On this page

Canvas assessment video playlist

Video playlist: Our learning technologies specialist, Karl McGuirk, steps us through the ‘must-knows’ of Canvas Assignments in a series of recordings from his Canvas Assessment workshops. The videos are presented in Panopto: staff login required.

Academic honesty declaration

Decide what instructions you will give students regarding the use of generative AI tools in coursework and please add an academic honesty declaration to all assignments.

Assignment reminders

Message students who have not yet submitted their assignment. Use your discretion whether this is a timely reminder in advance and/or after the deadline.

Booklet generation and processing for paper assignments

The University has developed a tool to generate and process assignment ‘booklets’, giving staff the option of delivering their assignments offline, then uploading the scanned completed assignments for online marking using SpeedGrader.

For details, visit the University’s .

Uploading scanned documents

For assessments that require students to draw/write and then take a photo of answers for uploading into Canvas (e.g., an Assignment of type File Uploads), prepare students in advance to download a document scanning app for their mobile device (e.g., Adobe scan, Microsoft Office Lens or Camscanner). In the case of designing the Assignment for an online test, students must have an opportunity to complete a practice exercise prior to the assessment date to ensure they are familiar with the technological requirements for uploading files.

Canvas Assignments also have the option to use Text entry for students to type directly into the assessment box, but it may be safer for students to create and save their own document on their computer for file upload in case of internet difficulties when inputting content into the text entry field.

Layered PDFs

Please familiarise yourself with the layered PDF problem so that you know what to do if you encounter it.

Assignment settings

Set the submission type

The Canvas Assignment tool allows a few different options for submission.

  • From the dropdown menu select Online.
  • From the Online entry options, select File Uploads to enable students to upload documents.

Canvas assignment, file upload type

  • Choose Restrict upload file types and limit the file type extensions to readable text files such as: doc,docx,xls,xlsx,pdf,pptx,ppsx,pps,rtf,odt,txt,html
  • Do not limit the number of attempts in case the student uploads the wrong file by mistake or they need to correct something before trying again.
  • Include this instruction the Assignment blurb: “We strongly recommend you download your submitted document from Canvas, after submitting it, to verify you have uploaded the correct document. It is your responsibility to check you have submitted the correct document.”
  • Alternatively, you can use the Text entry to enable students to type directly into the assessment box.

Note: If you are asking students to attach images to assignments, please inform them that Canvas only accepts GIF, JPEG, PNG and TIFF for image attachments. Read more about compatible file types in Canvas.

Setting the availability of the assignment

  • Set the availability of the Canvas Assignment by clicking Edit, then Manage due dates and assign to.
  • Review the difference between assignment due dates and availability dates.
  • Set your Due date for the end date and time of the assignment, e.g., for 5pm NZST, use 17:00 in Canvas.
  • Set Available from for when the assignment will be available to students.
  • The available Until time can be used to act as a ‘grace period’, for example, to cater for an internet or power outage on the day of the deadline. Students who submit the assignment during the grace period, will have their submissions flagged as ‘submitted late’.
  • Specify availability dates to control the date range the assignments can be viewed and submitted. If no availability limit has been set, students will still be able to upload submissions after the due date, however they will be labelled as ‘late’ in the Gradebook.
  • Choose ‘Assign to‘: everyone in the course, to a section, group or an individual student. If teaching a cross-listed course, it is important to clearly label assignments if they’re only for a specific course (see cross-listed courses). Refer to the guide: Assign assignments in cross-listed courses (PDF).
  • To set a different duration for a course section, click the ‘Add‘ button and assign the quiz to a different section using the ‘Assign to‘ drop-down list. Learn more about course sections in Canvas.
  • Via the ‘Add‘ button, you can also customise due dates to accommodate individuals or groups, such as by tutorial days or to give individual students an extension.
  • Don’t forget to Save and publish when ready.
Screenshot of Canvas assignment due dates

The due date is set to 13 September 2024, 17:00. The start date is set to 2 September 2024, 07:00. The until date is set to 14 September 00:00.

Note: You may encounter some error with setting up the availability times if the assignment due date is set after the course term ends. To fix this, you will need to ensure the Term Start and End dates are entered correctly in the course Settings, and the option ‘Students can only participate in the course between these dates’ is checked.

Using Turnitin Plagiarism Review to detect plagiarism

Activating the Turnitin Plagiarism Review tool for your Canvas Assignment enables Turnitin to generate a Similarity Report, comparing a student’s file submission to existing work on the web, including other students’ submissions.

Turnitin Plagiarism Review

Supplementary materials should be locked

This refers to supplementary materials uploaded to a quiz or assignment, e.g., images, PDFs or media files. These files should be restricted from students being able to access them ahead of the quiz or assignment’s availability date.

Note that if the Files menu is disabled in your course (we recommend this) students cannot access these items, but they can view them when they take the quiz or when the assignment is available. But if the Files menu is enabled in your course, please continue to read.

The images and files uploaded to Canvas quizzes* and assignments are saved under the Files menu in a folder called ‘Uploaded Media’. The folder is published by default. To ensure that these are only viewable during the assessment window, change the permission on the Uploaded Media folder to Only available to students with link.

* In Classic Quizzes, images and files attached to quiz questions are automatically saved in the ‘Uploaded media’ folder in Files. However, this is not an issue for New Quizzes.

A list of folders in the Canvas files menu

A list of folders in the Canvas files menu. the green checkmark called publish next to the uploaded media folder is highlighted.

Canvas file permission

The file permission setting with the checkbox called only available with link checked.

You can also restrict the view access of a file to within a certain period of time that matches the availability of the quiz or assignment. For example, if a quiz is available from 1pm 7th May to 1pm 8th May, you can schedule the same availability for the supplementary images and files.

Canvas file permission

The file permission setting with its availability scheduled between specific dates and times.

Do not reveal the grade to the students during the assessment time

To make sure Canvas Assignment grade is not posted to the students during marking:

  • From your Canvas course, go to Grades, locate the Final Assessment(s). Click on the three dots beside the name of the assessment.
    Canvas screenshot of the Grade Book with the assessment options visible
  • Click on Grade Posting Policy and choose Manual, scroll to the bottom and click Save.
    Canvas screenshot showing the Grade Book options for setting the Grade Posting Policy to manual

 

Assignment tips

Canvas offers many different assignment types and settings:

  • Leave the assignment unpublished until you are ready to release it to students.
  • In addition to students seeing the points received, the ‘display grade as‘ setting allows the results in the Gradebook to be seen as a percentage, complete/incomplete, or a letter grade.
  • Use Assignments and Quizzes as ungraded learning activities for practice. Using the setting ‘does not count towards final grade‘ will still list it in Assignments but it will not be included in the Gradebook.
  • Select the maximum number of submission attempts students can make for each online assignment. Attempts can be unlimited or limited, and can be customised to each assignment.
  • Choose ‘anonymous grading‘ if you need student names to be hidden from assignment submissions when marking.

Video: An overview of Canvas Assignments.

Instructor guides: Assignments

Assignment types

  • Use ‘No submission‘ option if there is nothing to submitted online in Canvas but a grade still needs to be entered into the Gradebook. Examples may include: compulsory attendance, a verbal presentation, in-person practical procedure or drama performance, or an art/poster exhibition.
  • ‘Online‘ submissions are most often used for file uploads, though they can also include a text entry or website URLs. You can opt to restrict the file types students can upload. This is useful if you have requested the document to be saved in a specified format, such as a pdf or an Excel spreadsheet.
  • ‘On paper‘ can be selected if the assessment activity is being done on paper and a grade still needs to be entered into the Gradebook, such as for exams that are not online.
  • ‘External tool‘ enables the use of Canvas-integrated LTIs or apps as the point of submission.
  • ‘Lucid‘ enables the Lucid for Education digital whiteboard and interactive diagram tools.

Multimedia assignments

Some courses might allow recorded presentations as an alternative option for written work. If this is allowed, specify in the instructions how you would like students to provide media files in Canvas, such as through Panopto. Academics and students can view resources, guidelines, suggestions and tips on .

Graded Discussions

When creating your Discussion select the option for Graded. You can assign points, due dates, availability dates, and rubrics as you would with any other form of assignment.

Instructor guide: Graded and peer review discussions

External assessment tools

View a list of external tools that can be used as Assignments in Canvas.

Assignment groups and weightings

Note: This is not to be confused with group assignments.

This feature of Assignments allows you to allocate a percentage weight to each assignment group, rather than individual assignments.

Canvas assignment group worth 20%, with three assignments

The screenshot shows the combined marks for the assignments accounts for 20% of the total grade for the course. The assignments are worth 15, 15, and 70 points respectively towards the assignment group’s total. Within each assignment group the percentage is calculated by dividing the total points a student has earned by the total points possible for all assignments, multiplied by the percent allocation for the assignment group (e.g., (8 + 7 + 65) ÷ 100 × 20 = 16%).

 

Instructor guides

Group assignments

Group assignments allow students to work together on an assignment and submit it as a group. One group member needs to submit the assignment on behalf of the group.

Note: ‘Group assignments‘ is not to be confused with ‘assignment groups‘. The former describes a collaborative assessment task and the latter is a collection of (or container for) one or more assignments, or multiple parts of a single assignment.

1

Getting started

Create student groups within a Group Set

Groups in Canvas can be used for managing student groups in a course. Groups are created within a Group Set from the ‘People’ section of your course. Each Group Set consists of multiple groups of students. There are three ways for creating groups within Group Sets:

  1. Manually create groups and assign students.
  2. Automatically create groups and assign students by defining how many groups students will be split into.
  3. Create a certain number of groups then allow students to self sign-up. You can set a maximum number of members for each group but make sure there are enough groups to accommodate all students.

Students can be assigned to (or self sign-up for) only one group in a Group Set. However, if you make more than one Group Set (e.g., for multiple group assignments), the combination of group members can vary between them.

  1. In your Canvas course, navigate to ‘People‘.
  2. Click ‘+ Group set‘ button.
  3. Give the Group Set a name (in this case, ‘Assignment One Group Set‘).
  4. Set up the ‘Group Structure‘ (in this case ‘10 groups‘ of ‘4 students‘ each).
  5. Click ‘Save‘.

Create group set with name and 10 groups with 4 members each

 

Instructor guide

2

For a group assignment worth less than 30% of the final grade

2a. Create an assignment group

Create an assignment group that will contain the group assignment.

Canvas assignment group with one assignment. The group is worth 20%

The screenshot shows the assignment group (named ‘Assignments’) accounts for 20% of the total course grade. The Group Assignment is worth 100 points towards the assignment group’s total marks.

Note: We have just chosen 100 points here for simplicity and convenience but it could be anything you like. In the example, if the Group Assignment scored 60 points, the assignment group would contribute 12% towards the total course grade.

  1. In your Canvas course, navigate to ‘Assignments‘.
  2. Click ‘+ Group‘ button.
  3. Give the assignment group a name (e.g., ‘Assignments‘) and indicate the percentage for the overall course grade (in this case ‘20%‘).
  4. Click ‘Save‘.

Create the assignment group with name and percent allocation

 

Instructor guide

2b. Create an assignment for the group submission

  1. From the Assignments page, click ‘+ Assignment‘ button.
  2. Name the assignment, (e.g., ‘Group Assignment‘) and provide a description, including instructions to students for uploading their documents.
  3. Enter the weighting towards the assignment group’s total marks (in this case ‘100 points‘) and select the ‘Assignment group‘ from the drop down list (in this case ‘Assignments‘).

Canvas group assignment worth 100 points

 

  1. Tick ‘This is a group assignment‘.
  2. Either: do not tick the ‘Assign grades to each student individually‘ check box. This means the same grade will apply to all members of the group. Or: tick ‘Assign grades to each student individually‘ check box to allocate each group member an individual grade.
  3. Select the ‘Group set‘ that you created in the ‘People’ section of your course (in this case ‘Assignment One Group Set‘).

Canvas group assignment option

Group assignments can be graded in SpeedGrader.

 

Instructor guides

3

For a group assignment worth 30% or more towards the final grade

3a. Create an assignment group

“Group assessment tasks with a weighting higher than 30% of the final grade for a course must include a component of at least 40% that assesses individuals’ contributions to the task.” — Assessment of Courses Procedures (§ 13).

To manage this, create an assignment group that contains two weighted assignments, one for the group submission and one for the individual contribution.

Canvas assignment group with two assignments. The group is worth 35%

The screenshot shows the combined marks for the group submission and individual contribution accounts for 35% of the total grade for the course. The group submission is worth 60 points towards the assignment group’s total marks and the individual contribution is worth 40 points.

  1. In your Canvas course, navigate to ‘Assignments‘.
  2. Click ‘+ Group‘ button.
  3. Give the assignment group a name (e.g., ‘Assignment One‘) and indicate the percentage for the overall course grade (in this case ‘35%‘).
  4. Click ‘Save‘.

Create the assignment group with name and percent allocation

 

Instructor guide

3b. Create an assignment for the group submission

  1. From the Assignments page, click ‘+ Assignment‘ button.
  2. Name the assignment, (e.g., ‘Group Assignment: Group submission‘) and provide a description, including instructions to students for uploading their documents.
  3. Enter the weighting towards the assignment group’s total marks (in this case ‘60 points‘) and select the ‘Assignment group‘ from the drop down list (in this case ‘Assignment One‘).

Canvas assignment for group submission worth 60 points

 

  1. Tick ‘This is a group assignment‘.
  2. Do not tick ‘Assign grades to each student individually‘ checkbox. This means the same grade will apply to all members of the group.
  3. Select the ‘Group set‘ that you created in the ‘People’ section of your course (in this case ‘Assignment One Group Set‘).

Canvas group assignment option

Group assignments can be graded in SpeedGrader.

 

Instructor guides

3c. Create an assignment for the individual grade

  1. From the Assignments page, click ‘+ Assignment‘ button.
  2. Name the assignment, (e.g., ‘Group Assignment: Individual contribution‘) and provide a description.
  3. Enter the weighting towards the assignment group’s total marks (in this case ‘40 points‘) and select the ‘Assignment group‘ from the drop down list (in this case ‘Assignment One‘).

Canvas assignment for group submission worth 40 points

  1. If no submission is required select ‘No submission‘ or choose from the options available.

Canvas assignment, no submission option

  1. Tick ‘This is a group assignment‘ checkbox and tick the ‘Assign grades to each student individually‘ check box.
  2. Select the ‘Group set‘ that you created in the ‘People’ section of your course (in this case ‘Assignment One Group Set‘).

Canvas group assignment option with individual grades option

4

For multiple group assignments that together contribute 30% or more towards the final grade

4a. Create multiple assignment groups

“Group assessment tasks with a weighting higher than 30% of the final grade for a course must include a component of at least 40% that assesses individuals’ contributions to the task.” — Assessment of Courses Procedures (§ 13).

To set this up you can create multiple weighted assignment groups and within each assignment group create separate assignments for the group submissions and individual contributions.

Two assignment groups with two assignments each. Each group is worth 20%

The screenshot shows the combined marks for the group assignments accounts for 40% of the total grade for the course. The group submissions are each worth 60 points towards their respective assignment group’s total marks and the individual contributions are each worth 40 points.

Follow steps 3a, 3b and 3c (above) to create each assignment group.

See also

Peer review assignments

Peer reviews can be enabled on an assignment for students to review each others’ work. There are two ways to assign peer reviews to students:

  1. Manually assign peer reviews
  2. Automatically assign peer reviews by defining how many reviews students are required to complete and when to assign peer reviews to students.

Please also note that:

  • Turnitin Plagiarism Framework can be used in group assignments and peer review assignments.
  • There are no fields in the assignment settings to set up the due date for completing a peer review. The description field for the assignment can be used to remind students when to complete them.
  • Rubrics can be used in peer review assignments. Students can use the rubric to review others’ work and instructors can use the same rubric for marking.
  • Only the instructors can grade assignments. The points calculated from the rubrics in peer reviews are not saved as grades.
  • The assignment settings cannot be changed once there are submissions.

 

Before you start

1. Enable a peer review assignment

Peer review assignments are enabled as an option when creating a new assignment. Click the checkbox labelled ‘Require peer reviews‘.

Canvas assignment: Require peer reviews

If there are groups that have been set up in a course, the option of allowing intra-group peer reviews will be available. By default, the option is not selected, which means Canvas will exclude members of the same group when assigning peer reviews. However, by selecting the checkbox, reviews can be assigned randomly to all members of the course, including members of the same group.

 

Instructor guides

2. Submitting peer reviews and viewing feedback

Once peer reviews are assigned, students will be notified via email and in their Recent Activity Stream and To Do List. To complete the assignment, students need to review peers’ assignments and add comments. Students can also use rubrics and annotation to provide feedback.

Please also note that:

  • Students cannot edit their saved rubrics in peer reviews. However, they can still add comments.
  • Instructors need to unmute a peer review assignment to allow students to view feedback.
  • Students cannot see the reviewer’s name if anonymity is enabled in a peer review.

 

Instructor guides

3. Verifying students' completion of peer review

Instructors can view a list of all assigned peer reviews with their completion status in the peer review page. Instructors can also view the details in peer reviews by clicking on the names of review receivers or reviewers.

Please also note that:

  • Students don’t automatically receive a grade for completing a peer review. This needs to be done by creating a non-submission assignment then assigning points manually.
  • If students used a rubric to provide feedback, the points calculated from the rubric in peer reviews are not saved in Gradebook. The points cannot be exported.
  • Instructors can view the comments and marked rubrics by each reviewer in SpeedGrader. Also, instructors can use the rubric to grade the assignment.

 

Instructor guide

Rubrics

Rubrics are presented as tables, with the criteria for assessment presented in rows and the levels of performance for each criterion presented in columns.

  • Create, edit and delete rubrics in your course.
  • Add rubrics to assignments, quizzes and graded discussions.
  • Include outcome-based assessment criteria for scoring.

Important: You should not edit your rubric if you’ve already attached it to a published assignment.

Video: Canvas tutorial – Rubrics.

Instructor guides: Rubrics

Outcomes

Outcomes are used to track mastery in a course. From the outcomes page, you can create and manage outcomes, create outcome groups, import outcomes, and manage rubrics.

  • Import University of Auckland outcomes into your course.
  • Align University and faculty graduate profiles to course assessments.
  • Pull graduate profile attributes to course-level outcomes.
  • Associate outcomes to assignment rubrics.
  • Create nested outcomes by dragging and dropping outcomes to create structure. This can be done at the account, sub-account or course-level. Remember the hierarchical structure of top-level accounts, sub-accounts and courses.

Video: Canvas tutorial – Outcomes.

Instructor guides: Outcomes

Submit an assignment on a student’s behalf

This is a feature of Canvas that the University has allowed. Use cases might include: submitting a late assignment on a student’s behalf after the deadline, or where a student has encountered technical difficulties in submitting their document.

View details on the Canvas instructor guide.

Video: Submitting an assignment on behalf of a student.

Support

Check out our learning technology support page to find out what options are available for Canvas.

On this page

See also…

 

Page updated 11/11/2025 (added instructions for creating group and peer review assignments)

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