Creating Assignments

Table of Contents

Overview

Creating Assignments in Canvas is a good way to communicate to students what they are expected to produce in a course. Assignments can be a place for students to submit their work or can be reminders of work to be turned in in the classroom or outside of Canvas. Each graded assignment in Canvas creates a column in the gradebook. This page will walk instructors through the basics of creating an assignment and organizing them for use in your course.

Create Assignment

An assignment can be created from the calendar, or the modules tab or assignments tab of your course. Depending on where you create the assignment from, you will need to:

• From the calendar, select the due date for the new assignment. A pop-up window will appear, where you can edit the name, course, and group of the assignment and publish it. By clicking on "More Options", you can access the full content editor.
  
  

  Open

  

  new assignment in calendar

• From course modules, select the "+" content button to the right of the module name, add an assignment, select "New Assignment", title the assignment and select "Add Item". Once you have created the assignment in modules, open it and click "edit" to access the full assignment editor.
  
  

  Open

  

  new assignment in modules

From the assignments tab, select the "+Assignment" button in the upper right-hand corner of the page or the "+" button to the right of the name of an assignment group, if you have any. If you selected the "+Assignment" button, you will taken directly to the full assignment editor, and if you select the "+" button, you will be prompted to enter the type, name, due date, and point value of the assignment. You can select "More Options" to access the full assignment editor".

Assignment Editor

From the assignment editor, you can enter an assignment description, a point value, an assignment group, the format in which grades will be displayed, submission type, whether or not this will be a group assignment, whether or not the assignment will be peer reviewed or undergo moderated grading, and enter a due date.

Follow this tutorial for more detail on how to use the assignment editor.

Assignment Due Dates

It is possible to specify the a due date and a date range for an assignment,. These dates are called availability dates. These dates are optional and depends on how the instructor want to manage the assignment:

Due Date

The due date is the date and time when the assignment is due. Student assignments submitted after the due date will be marked as late in the Gradebook. You can also set a specific time as part of the due date.

For example, if you set a due date of September 19 at 4:15pm, any student submision made at or after September 19 at 4:15:01 is marked late.

Availability Dates

Available From[1] : The date and time when the Assignments will become available to students. If no time is set, this date defaults to 12:00 am for the course time zone. Students cannot view assignment content until after the Available from date has passed.

Until[2] : the date and time when students can no longer submit the assignment. If no time is set, this time defaults to 11:59 pm for the course time zone and the assignment will close at 12:00:00 am of the following day.