Overview of the Assignments

Assignment Overview

An important aspect of a Canvas course is how the tools in a course work together. Canvas is designed to reduce the workload for an instructor. The Assignments page drives much of activity of your course and all items created on the Assignments page will also populate the Calendar, Grades and Syllabus tools in your Canvas course. These four tools are tightly integrated with each other and will save you much time and effort when creating and managing your course. The Assignment list is also very useful for students and helps them keep track of assignment due dates. To view the assignment list click on Assignments on left menu of your course. The assignment list will list all of the course’s graded assignment activities (including discussions and quizzes) that students must complete in your course. Review the numbered items below.

Search – Use the search bar to quickly locate an assignment in the assignment list.
Assignment Groups – Click the +Group icon to create a new assignment group. When there are multiple assignment groups instructors can weight grades or drop lowest/highest score from an assignment group. If instructors do not plan on weight grades or dropping scores, one assignment group is all that is needed.
Adding Assignments – Click + Assignment above the assignment groups OR click the + plus icon in an assignment group.
Assignment Options/Weight Grades – Click the top gear icon to set the option for weighting grades by assignment groups.
Group Edit/Delete – Click the gear icon in the group title bar to edit or delete the assignment group. Note: Be very careful when deleting assignment groups. When deleting an assignment group with assignments, a dialog box will appear allowing instructors to choose to move the assignments to another assignment group. Read the options carefully! If assignments are deleted from the assignment page, they will also be deleted in the gradebook including student scores.
Assignment Options - Click the gear icon next to assignment to display the assignment options.

Edit - Click Edit to open the quick edit dialog box where you can edit the assignment title, points, and due date for the assignment.
Delete - Click to delete the assignment.
Move To - click to move the assignment to a new location in the assignment list OR point the mouse to the left of the assignment title to click and drag the assignment to a new location in the assignment list. You can also do this with assignment groups as well.
Share to Commons - Click to share the assignment to the Canvas Commons.

Assignment Title & Details - Click the assignment title to display the assignment page. Under the assignment title will be the assignment details. The details include module location, available date, due date, and points.
Unpublish/Publish – Each assignment will have the publish option. When an assignment is not published the cloud icon will be gray. When an assignment is published the cloud icon will be green. Please note when assignments have students submissions they can no longer be unpublished.

Setting Group Weights

Be sure the assignments are ordered in the assignment groups as you wish weight grades. Review the Assignment Overview tab for details on creating assignment groups. Click the global gear icon above the assignment list.

The Assignment Settings dialog box will appear. (1) Check the box next to Weight final grade based on assignment groups. (2) In the boxes that display for the groups input the percentage weight for each group. (3) Click Save when done.

Dropping Scores from a Group

On the assignment page click the gear icon next to an assignment group and select Edit.

A dialog box will appear. (1) Under Number of scores to ignore for each student indicate the number of lowest or highest scores to drop. (2) If desired, next to Never Drop click Add Assignment and from the drop down menu select an assignment from the group that should never be dropped. Click Save.

Canvas Guides

Printable Guides and Video Tutorials

Canvas Online Guides

Note: These guides are maintained by the Canvas Documentation Team and are available on the Canvas Community site. Some of the information in these guides may not apply to the Lake Land College instance of Canvas. If you have a question about any features mentioned in these guides, please review the Getting Help page for details on who to contact at Lake Land College.