[ARCHIVED] Limit assignment submissions for some students and not others

[BStutzman]

I want to give one assignment that has limited (1) attempts for most of my students, but not all.  I had a student submit the wrong file and I want that one student to have another attempt so that she can turn in the right file.  An admin deleted her first submission, but she still can not turn in the right one.  I have tried the feedback---> reassign feature and that doesn't work as the reassign button won't light up.  Any ideas?

[SusanNiemeyer]

Hi @BStutzman ,

In order to let that student submit a second file, you'll need to change the number of attempts for the entire class. The only way to keep other students from taking advantage of this and submitting second files is to control the dates of submission. 

****NOTE TO CANVAS DEVELOPERS***  Please treat Assignments like Quizzes. For Quizzes, we can add an extra attempt for individual students. Please give us the option with Assignments.

[Ron_Bowman]

@SusanNiemeyer -

I agree  about updating the assignment settings.  It would be nice to have a moderate option for the assignments so that cases like @BStutzman mentioned are easily handled.

Of course one option in this case is to create another assignment and assign it only to the student(or students) that need another submission attempt and then omit them (using the differentiated assignment approach) from the original assignment.

https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Instructor-Guide/How-do-I-view-differentiated-assignments-with-di...  (not sure if this is the correct page)

Then for the original assignment, you have to excuse the one student.

The one student will then see both assignments and everyone else just sees the original

[SusanNiemeyer]

There is almost always a "work around," but I don't have the time to create a new assignment for an individual student.  The better "work around" is to wait until the "available until date" has passed for the class, and then to set a new "available until date" for the student who needs to resubmit the assignment. Then changing the number of submissions from 1 to 2 won't affect the rest of the class.

That being said, I wish the Canvas developers would make it easier to allow instructors to add an extra submission for individual students. In Speedgrader, we can "reassign" the assignment, but we still have to change the number of submissions. Too many steps. 

[Chris_Hofer]

@SusanNiemeyer …

Maybe this would be worthy of a Feature Idea request?

[SusanNiemeyer]

@Chris_Hofer   The obvious solution would be to increase the functionality of the "Reassign" button to give the student another submission. Right now, all "Reassign" does is put the assignment back on the student's To-Do List, which really doesn't help much.

In all honesty, I don't see many improvements coming out of Feature Idea requests. I really don't. Cynicism is setting in for me.

[Chris_Hofer]

@SusanNiemeyer ...

I certainly understand where this would be beneficial for instructors to have this capability.  As a Canvas administrator that doesn't teach courses in Canvas, it's good to have other perspectives that I might not think of.  I did a bit of searching here in the Community, and I *think* I found an existing Feature Idea that relates to what you are referring to.  If this Feature Idea sounds close to what you're referring to, I'd encourage you (as well as the others in this thread) to participate in the conversation.  It looks like you're not alone in wanting something like this in Canvas.  So, don't give up hope.  🤞

per-user-reattempts for assignments

Take care...be well.

[BStutzman]

This actually doesn't work (according to my testing).  I waiting for the date to pass for "everyone" and then changed the setting to 2 attempts instead of one.  I then assigned to just those students who needed to resubmit with a new date and it gave everyone 2 attempts.  

[SusanNiemeyer]

O.K. Typical scenario. I just had a student mess up on an assignment. He needs to resubmit it. Now I have to reopen the assignment to two submissions for the entire class. Without a doubt, other students in the class will resubmit their homework twice. Argh!  (No good dead goes unpublished.)

[BStutzman]

Again, that did not work when I tested it.  All students got the ability to 2 attempts even though the date had passed for "everyone else".

[SusanNiemeyer]

In this case (the "available until" date has passed), all of the students can see that the number of submissions is now "2" instead of "1." However, they should not be able to actually submit a second time without the instructor extending the "available until date" for everyone. Then, to accommodate the handful of students who need to resubmit the assignment, the instructor would open a new set of dates with +ADD. 

[Ron_Bowman]

@BStutzman -

Did you have an until date set?  If so, then the students who are past the until date may see that there are 2 submission attempts but they will not be able to submit the assignment.  Only those students that you differentiated out will be able to submit.

If you do not have an until date set, then all students will be able to submit with their submissions showing as late

One thing some of my students have found out is that they can still access comments on the project, so I will see submissions made through the comments.

[SusanNiemeyer]

Here is my problem. Each week, I open up a new module. :The students have from Monday to Friday to complete a series of small, incremental, low-stakes assignments (five separate formative assessments.) The class is pass/ no pass, and I want to provide just-in-time feedback and remediation. In this class, I have two students whom I will nickname "Mr. Eager Beaver" and "Ms. Bright Eyes." Both of them routinely submit all five assignments on Monday. 

Mr. Eager Beaver might be "eager," but he doesn't read carefully and he makes lots of mistakes. His scores for the five assignments (out of 10 points each) are 4, 5, 3, 6, and 4. Obviously, I need to immediately intervene, provide support and additional instruction, and have him resubmit the assignments.

Ms. Bright Eyes, on the other hand, is doing great. Her scores are 9, 9, 9, 8, and 9. In this case, I can simply give her the answers for the small number of questions she missed. There's no need for her to resubmit her homework.

So what's happening right now? I'm having to change the number of submissions to "2 submissions" for the entire class in order to give Mr. Eager Beaver the extra practice he needs. However, Ms. Bright Eyes is also resubmitting all five assignments because she's determined to get 100%. Again, this is a pass / no-pass class.

So in order to curtail Ms. Bright Eyes from resubmitting assignments unnecessarily, I would have to wait until Saturday for the assignment window to close in order to help Mr. Eager Beaver out. This is not just-in-time remediation. 

So how do we solve this? With the "Reassign Assignment" button, I want to give Mr. Eager Beaver a second opportunity to submit his work. I don't want to go back to the main Assignment page and give everyone, including Ms. Bright Eyes, extra attempts. 

We can do this with Quizzes. We should be able to do this with Assignments. 

[Ron_Bowman]

@SusanNiemeyer 

That is an excellent example of why it is needed.  Unfortunately right now it seems like the best solution for you would be to create a new assignment for Mr. Eager Beaver (then add other students into the list of students for access as needed.  Of course you would then have to go and excuse them from the first assignment.

Not a very good solution and more work than necessary.

Too bad the assignments were not self grading, then you could just go in on Thursday and add another attempt to everyone and then anybody could try and improve their score with a second attempt.

[SusanNiemeyer]

@Ron_Bowman  Alas, I don't have time to create extra assignments for Mr. Eager Beaver. This "work around" is simply too much work for me. Who has time for that?

What I REALLY want is for the Canvas developers to get a real sense of how the platform works in real classrooms. (Cue the Spice Girls now. "I'll tell you what I want, what I really, really want....")

[Ron_Bowman]

@SusanNiemeyer 

I couldn't agree more.  But in the meantime, you can always learn javascript, figure out how to manipulate the information on Canvas and create your own script to do it for you.  Then you would publish it on the forum here and the rest of us could use your work and be thankful for it. 😊

[cstrikwerda · Accepted solution]

Hello @BStutzman 
Thanks for contributing to the community with this thread in help of better understanding the Reassign Submission feature. 
I tested this to be able to understand what you are seeing. Right now, we are seeing this is a limitation of the Reassign Submissions option. When we only have one attempt, we would not be able to grant a student an additional attempt with the Reassign Submission button. 
Our guide mentions this, but it might not be clear on the first read through. It notes: 

• If the assignment's settings do not allow students to make an additional attempt, the Reassign Assignment shows that the assignment is not able to be reassigned.
  
  This would mean if the student does not have any allowed attempts left, we will not be able to reassign them.
  
  I believe this is best brought up in the feature request idea that @Chris_Hofer mentioned:
  https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Idea-Conversations/per-user-reattempts-for-assignments/idi-p/3675...
  
  We also have this feature request as well: https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Idea-Conversations/Allow-Reassign-Button-to-Override-Submission-L...
  
  Please vote on those ideas to gain popularity among our users, as this would be a great benefit as far as the ability to assign students an additional attempt via the Reassign button in Speedgrader.

[AlbertDeJesus]

Assignment moderation is a "must" needed feature for Canvas. There are all sorts of reasons as to why this must be an option, from "I forgot to add a title" to student's accommodations. 

The adding attempts to enable "resubmit" tool has not work for the reasons mentioned: essentially "all" get the attempt.

Current solution: for me it is to ask the student to submit the additional attempt by mail, and I upload the new file (add "V2" or similar to label it as the second attempt) to the Canvas Speed grader as a comment. Of course, this is less than ideal since it will not allow for the use of Canvas tools for annotating the professor's comments. In my case, I do that in Word so it makes to difference.