Word for Mac - Assignment Submission Incomplete File

aaron_bahmer
Community Contributor
‎07-10-2020 11:55 AM

A student contacted me because a course instructor graded her poorly on an assignment. The instructor said the assignment was incomplete. The student said the file was complete but, upon review of the file submission in Canvas, was startled to see the submitted file was different than what she last saved in Word.

Student has MS Word for Mac, if that has any bearing on what is happening.

Lab 10

The student attached her document to me through Inbox three times for my review. The first turned out to be the same, incomplete version of the file. The second was a PDF she created today from the complete document. The third was uploaded during a Zoom session after the student showed me the one, and only, file she has for this document -- I saw that it was complete in Word on her system. I watched her create an Inbox message to me and attach the file. The file I received was complete. I viewed the file properties in Word and noted the difference in date, file size, and work time from the incomplete versions. The completed version was done prior to the Canvas due date.

Lab 4

Because the student mentioned this had happened before, we also looked at a previous assignment. Both the submitted file in Canvas and one she sent to me via Inbox were incomplete. During our Zoom session, I saw the complete version -- again, the only file she has for this document. Contrary to what happened with Lab 10, though, the next time she attached it to an Inbox message, I again got the incomplete version. Further confounding is that the next time she opened it on her computer, it was obviously the incomplete version. This completely blew our minds. I observed her choosing to "not save" each time.

In all cases, I did not observe an I-used-SaveAs-and-have-multiple-copies-in-multiple-places problem. This student is very organized and knows exactly where her files are. She opened the files by double-clicking them from her file manager -- she did not open from Word's "recent" file list.

Have any of your students encountered similar behavior, where the submitted file doesn't match the file the student meant to submit? Is there a failsafe way to get the right document (aside from saveAs PDF)?

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