Validating a Fix: Submit Button Visibility in Assignment Enhancements

[SamGarza1]

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We’re working to resolve a bug related to the Assignment Enhancements – Student feature and want to quickly validate our proposed fix with the community.

The Issue

When students have no remaining attempts on an assignment, they’re currently seeing an active-looking “Submit Assignment” button on the assignment details page. While the button doesn’t function when clicked, its presence is misleading and inconsistent with expected behavior.

Student view of an assignment showing the Submit Assignment button

Proposed Solutions

We’re exploring two options to improve the student experience while ensuring clarity and accessibility:

Option 1:
After a student submits their first attempt they see their assignment submission and the button text changes from “Submit Assignment” to “New Attempt.”

• If the student has remaining attempts, clicking the button allows another submission.
  
  
• If they’ve reached the maximum allowed attempts, clicking the “New Attempt” button triggers an error message indicating that no more submissions are allowed.

Option 2:
As with Option 1, they see their assignment submission and the button text changes to “New Attempt” after the first submission.

• However, once the maximum number of attempts is reached, the button is completely removed from the assignment page.

We’d Love Your Feedback

We’d love to hear your thoughts on which approach best supports you and your students. Your feedback will help us ensure the final solution is not only clear and intuitive, but also fully accessible for all learners.

[jsowalsk]

@SamGarza1 We think the second option is beneficial.  It doesn't give them the false hope that they can do a new attempt. 

[venitk]

Of these two, I prefer the second, but I don't really like that one. I would prefer a grayed-out button that says "no more attempt available" or something like that. Otherwise, we'll get help desk calls from students saying the New Attempt button is missing. 

Even better would be a way to alert students before their last attempt that it's their last attempt. 

For example, tell them they have 3 maximum (or whatever) attempts allowed, and tell them which attempt this is. 

Or, have a little note that shows up above or below the Submit Assignment button on their last attempt that indicates that it's the last attempt. 

This feature may already give students that information; disregard if so. 

[clpatter]

Of the two options, I prefer #2.  

What I would like even better is if the button could be disabled when there are no attempts left, like it does when assignment enhancements are not enabled.  

[marjeta]

I agree with @clpatter and @venitk 

1. Option 2 is better, so that students don't have false hope.
2. The best solution would be to keep the button, but:
   
   1. Text on the button should change to "No attempts left" or something similar
   2. The button should also be disabled.

[kailey]

@SamGarza1 Neither options are optimal. Ideally, the behavior would match the existing behavior when Assignment Enhancements is disabled, which is that the New Attempt button is visible, but disabled. (However, it's worth noting that the existing behavior also has more to be desired as well, such as a more obvious indication that there are no other attempts allowed as others have mentioned.) Since that code is already available for existing behavior, hopefully it won't be difficult to implement with Assignment Enhancements. 

If forced to pick, the second is slightly better, but would still prevent us from enabling the feature if given the choice. The first option is misleading and not a great user experience if the maximum number of attempts are met. The second will cause confusion among students and cause a lot of help tickets if the students aren't aware of a submission limit restriction. Having a disabled button makes it obvious to the student that they can no longer submit. 

[SamGarza1]

Hi All! @kailey @marjeta @clpatter @venitk @jsowalsk 

Since it's been mentioned a couple of times I wanted to provide an answer on why we can't disable the button after max attempts has been reached. We have found that disabling the button without an explanation why results in confusion much the way the current active, but non-functional button does. We can add an explanation why (as suggested in option 1) on an active button, but we don't want to use this pattern with a disabled button because it will not be discoverable by screen reader users. By basing our solution on one of the two options in the original post we can improve the overall accessibility while starting to address the user experience issues with the button today.

[kailey]

@SamGarza1 Thank you for following-up! In that case, it would be nice if the second option could be accompanied with some sort of on-screen text indication to notify students that there are no additional attempts available. Ideally, in the exact same location where the New Attempt button would be. Thanks for considering.

[b_w_reid]

I agree with all of the above comments in that option 2 is the better solution, but still requires some additional explanation for the best experience.

[SamGarza1]

Hi All!

Thank you all for sharing your feedback—it was instrumental in helping us validate the right approach. Based on your input, we’ll be moving forward with Solution 2: hiding the button when a student has no remaining attempts. We’re actively working on this fix now, and it should appear on the Canvas Known Issues page, where you can watch it, within the next few days.