Inserting user submissions

[maguire]

I am aware of Create Submissions with API and the Submissions API, but I have not really seen something that addresses the issues concerning submitting migrated material from one LMS as submissions by different students in to a Canvas course.

Context: I am trying to take material from a multiyear course (where students in a particular program of studies have a series of assignments that they have to do over a 3 or 5 year period of time). More concretely for a 3 year course the students will submit 16 reports (which I would like to treat as 16 assignments).

Problem:

1. I understand how to create the assignments via the API, but do not know how to move the accumulated assignments of each of the students to the corresponding assignments in the Canvas course.
2. A substantial fraction of students have only submitted a subset of the assignments, hence the instructor needs to be able to see what was submitted together with their comments on the earlier submission.
3. As far as I can see there is no ability to import or export a course containing student submissions.

Alternatives:

1. prepare a set of files for each student and then masquerade as the student and upload the files for each of the assignments and do each of the submissions or
2. create a file hierarchy with the files for all students and upload this set of files simply for the instructor.

Alternative (a) has the advantages that both the student and the instructor can see the relevant earlier submissions.

Is there another alternative?  Is there something I am missing?

[wurzel]

I think you are right that the Submissions endpoint isn't going to do the job. It assumes you are logged in (or masquerading as) the submitter.  You could script that as you suggest in A, but that seems like a shotgun approach. 

I wonder if  you could use the Grade Passback feature to do what you are attempting?

[maguire]

Thanks  @wurzel ‌ for your suggestion!

As far as I can see, the Grade Passback API is just a LTI assignment passing back a score. It does not really let one insert content as a given user.

Currently, I have implemented option (b) and pass the set of files to the instructor outside of Canvas. This means that the instructor does have the ability to look at previous report submissions (submitted via the earlier LMS) and also has access to the comments made on each submission. Sadly the grading information and the submissions are not integrated with Canvas.

[akkaufmann]

Hi  @maguire ‌,

It is possible to masquerade as a user via the API if you have their user id or SIS id. It is explained here: Masquerading - Canvas LMS REST API Documentation. Using this you can use the submission API to submit assignments on the students' behalf. You could also grade and comment on the instructor's behalf.

Alex