[Assignments] Download a subset of assignment submissions

I have browsed around a bit and am thinking i am missing this so feel free to close this down if it's a duplicate but in working with our large enrollment computer science classes I've noticed that it would be ideal to allow for some kind of partial download of assignments.

 

If there were a way for an instructor/TA to select a subset of students and download their submissions, that would make the download size, time, and load more manageable. I suspect you 'can' download 200 computer program submissions in one zip file but for larger enrollment courses you might not want to Smiley Happy

 

- Melanie

50 Comments
ezaurova
Community Participant

Melanie, this would be very helpful for me as well.  I teach two of the five sections of one course, and we all share one canvas course, though we're able to differentiate between the sections.  Still, when I go to download the submissions, I have to get everyone's, and then go through and select those from my students only.  It would be much easier to be able to download the submissions for specific sections.

vandover
Community Participant

I was just about to submit this idea, Melanie, and I am glad to have found yours.

Building on Elena's post, I would recommend that the "download submission" option downloads the submissions for whichever section the user is viewing (entire course or a specific section).

kroeninm
Community Champion
Author

Absolutely fritzvandover it makes the most sense tied to sections I think as well. 

- Melanie

r_v_jones
Community Contributor

 @kroeninm ‌

I have just drafted this and then saw your post here, completely agree on this feature  

"Assignment Submissions download to match Sections

I’d like to make a feature request with respect to downloading of assignments.

We use sections to organise our students so tutors can easily identify their students and the ones they have to mark. The issue we are having is that if a lecturer goes to mark their students they can’t download only their students submission via the download submission option.

They download all submission by all students. This can be seriously problematic when you have over 140 students but you as a lecturer only mark 6-8 students. It also kind of makes the section origination defunct as the lectures see everyone’s work .

Can we please have a feature that means you only download the active section you are viewing or can select the students section to download.

Thanks"

dherstad
Community Novice

Thanks for writing this up!  For an additional perspective, please see our idea which was marked as a duplicate of this idea:  https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/10126-download-submissions-by-section?sr=search&searchId=19069...‌.

Thanks,
Doug

michael_fedyk
Community Novice

Upvoted :smileygrin:

Just had a call from a teacher, 1578 students in the course, 56 tutorial groups delivered via sections. He wants to download the assignments from only his group of 30 students. The download command downloads all 1578 submissions even with only his filtered view of the Gradebook.

Herding some cats here to get more upvotes!

RobDitto
Community Champion

Voted! This feature is sorely needed. In our institution's large, multi-section courses, we work around this by enrolling TAs (sometimes teachers) as limited to only interact with other users in the same course section. That is the primary way in which Canvas can currently filter bulk Download Submissions by section.  It would be nice to be able to do this regardless of how teachers and TAs are enrolled -- and as  @michael_fedyk ‌ suggested to have this match the current Gradebook filtering.

ElizabethWI
Community Contributor

Seeing this information, I fear that my hope of creating sections to decrease gradebook issues with very large enrollments is a pipe dream, at least for now. I am struggling to understand what the benefit of creating sections is and frustrated that it can't do such a seemingly simple thing.

greg_dabelstein
Community Participant

I am totally surprised that this is not currently a feature given privacy concerns. We have our enrollments set to only interact with those from the same section but even if I filter by section in the Graebook,  a teacher gets all the submissions.

christophe_bree
Community Participant

Hi,

We also need to be able to download the submitted documents per section instead of one big file. (700 students in one course, 12 sections, managed by 6 instructors)

Or at least download the documents in a subfolder per section.

One way to work around this is by creating assignments per section, but that is of course not a good way of working.

update: Thank you  @RobDitto ‌ for your suggestion to limit the user view to their own section. That works!