Avoiding Common Issues

• Always set a Points value of greater than 0 when creating either a Canvas or a Turnitin Assignment.  If an assignment is formative you can tick ‘Do not count this assignment towards the final grade.’  You can choose to display the grade as ‘Complete/Incomplete’ if you do not want students to see a numeric grade. Leaving the points value as zero will prevent the marks from a Turnitin assignment from pulling into the Gradebook. A support request needs to be raised by LTDS to Turnitin to resolve this.
• To allow late submissions when you create a Turnitin assignment you must tick Allow Late Submission.  This is essential if you use Turnitin for a 24-hour take-home exam. Submissions made after the due date and clearly marked as late in the assignment inbox and the gradebook.  Canvas assignments automatically allow late submission.  
• It is not possible to submit a file on behalf of a student for either a Canvas or a Turnitin Assignment.  If a student is experiencing problems submitting an assignment contact the IT Service Desk via https://nuservice.ncl.ac.uk.  
• Assignment file sizes up to 5GB can be submitted to a Canvas assignment, and students can submit more than one file as part of the same assignment submission. Turnitin assignments support the submission of a single file up to 100MB. Note that large files may take a long time to submit, particularly when students are submitting their work from off-campus.  If you need students to submit files larger than these size limits contact the IT Service Desk via https://nuservice.ncl.ac.uk for advice.  
• To contact students who have not submitted you can send a message from the gradebook.  If anonymous marking is applied you can temporarily switch it off in order to do this, by editing the assignment to un-tick ‘Graders cannot view student names’, sending the message from the gradebook, and then editing the assignment again to switch ‘Graders cannot view student names’ back on. 
• To delegate marking to specific graders using a Canvas Assignment sections can be used to set up administrative groups of students. Each marker can access the submissions from students in their own section in the Speedgrader. It is not currently possible to automatically delegate marking to specific graders for a Turnitin assignment. Information is available on how to work around this constraint
• To access assignment submissions for marking always use the Assignment link in the Canvas course navigation menu. This will ensure you will access the correct marking tools for the type of assignment that has been created. Using the links in your ‘To do’ list is not recommended, because this does not open Turnitin Assignments in the correct marking interface. 
• In a Canvas Assignment, you can set different deadlines for individual students, for a course section, or for a group of students. This function is also available for Turnitin assignments, but does not work in the same way: it gives all students the latest deadline in Turnitin, which results in any submissions after the main deadline not being shown as late. The function can also cause technical issues with the Turnitin assignment, therefore it is only recommended to use it for a Canvas assignment, it is not recommended for a Turnitin assignment.
• Students can resubmit after the due date to a Canvas assignment. If multiple or unlimited attempts have been permitted in the assignment settings students are able to continue to submit after the due date (if the 'available until date' has not passed), including those who have already submitted. If students resubmit after the due date has passed their submission will flag as late. Updating the allowed attempts to 1 once the due date has passed will prevent students from being able to resubmit after the due date, but allow students who are yet to submit to do so, if multiple or unlimited attempts were originally permitted.
• Students can only access annotated feedback for the latest version of a Canvas assignment submission. If a resubmission is made in error once marking has taken place and the due date has passed, for example, because multiple or unlimited attempts have been permitted in the assignment settings, students will lose access to annotated feedback (markers and admin users can still access these and provide to the student via an alternate route). 

• Only students who have submitted will be assigned peer reviews if you use the option to automatically assign peer reviews. Automatically assigning peer reviews is done on a specific date and time (either a date specified in the peer review settings, or on the assignment due date if no other date is selected). If students submit after this date you can open the Peer Reviews list and click ‘Assign peer reviews’ to automatically assign them. If required you can also manually assign peer reviews to students who did not submit.  
• It is not possible to assign a due date by which peer reviews must be completed. You will need to manage this manually by informing students of the deadline for them to complete the peer reviews.  Note that Canvas will not mark any students who fail to meet that deadline as late. 
• Comments made by reviewing students are automatically released to the reviewee immediately, so you will not have the opportunity to moderate any comments before they are released. We recommend that you make students aware that this will be the case, and brief them about giving constructive feedback. 
• If you want students to give a mark for a peer review you need to add a rubric for them to complete. Marks given by a peer reviewer are not automatically fed into the gradebook; if this is required a member of staff will need to open each peer review and copy the mark from the rubric into the Grade box in Speedgrader. 

Do not use quizzes for written assignments – see our guidance on user experience for quizzes. 

Partial credit is only available in the Multiple Answer and Matching question types. 

Feedback can be added to all question types for the question overall, with some question types allowing feedback to be added to individual answer options. See the Canvas guidance on adding feedback to questions. 

Avoid releasing feedback until you are ready by ensuring that the appropriate settings are selected under ‘Restrict student result view’. 

There is no time release of feedback from a Quiz, the feedback and marks need to be released manually. The mark can be released independently in the gradebook by posting the grade, the feedback and the mark can be made available by switching off ‘Restrict student result view’ or ticking the required options under this setting. 

The use of timed quizzes is not recommended. Find out why at our guidance on timed quizzes. 

If a timed quiz has been used it is possible to allow additional time for students entitled to it, but it is not possible to extend this or allow more time in New Quizzes once the attempt has started. Only a new attempt can be granted. 

To increase assessment integrity when using quizzes, consider the use of Item banks and shuffling questions and answer options.