Instructor Assignment Dashboard - See all assignment details in one place

woodsdm2
Community Contributor
‎10-28-2023 01:55 PM
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Purpose

This tool was created to allow an instructor to see all of the details for all of the assignments in a course in one place.  I had several possible uses in mind when I created this tool.
  • It's the beginning of the semester, and I've just finished setting up the Canvas sites for my courses.  Before I publish them, I like to do a quality review to make sure I've set them up correctly.  It's easy to see things like module contents, due dates for assignments, etc. in Canvas, but to see most of the assignment settings, you have to edit each individual assignment which can take a long time.  I wanted a faster way to do this.
  • Have you ever had a student mention a problem with an assignment - maybe there was no way to submit the assignment?  You quickly edit the assignment in Canvas but then wonder whether other assignments have the same problem.  This tool lets you easily check all of your assignments at once.
  • For our online courses, we used common course shells.  When I am teaching a course for the first time, I need to review the course details.  This tool will easily let you see if a course has any group assignments, uses the Canvas peer review functionality, uses plagiarism checking, etc., which might require additional setup like creating course groups.

Instructions

  1. Open the Google Spreadsheet Assignment Dashboard   https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/14VC6zxbcbVt_YQJjJ4cxlVKfn-QmxMZeuYvuyaxD_fY/copy   . This will require you to make a copy of the spreadsheet.  Edit the file name and browse to select a location to save the file.
  2. When the spreadsheet opens, after a short time (approx. 30 seconds), a Canvas menu option will appear next to the "Help" menu option. 
  3. From the Canvas menu, select "Configure API Settings".  An "Authorization Required" pop-up will be displayed.  Click continue, and then select your Google account.  Click "Allow" to enable the script in the spreadsheet to run.
  4. Now that the script is able to run select "Configure API Settings" from the Canvas menu again.  Enter the hostname for your Canvas instance and a Canvas API token.  See How do I manage API access tokens as an instructor? for details about how to generate an API access token.
  5. From the Canvas menu, select "Specify Course ID" and enter the ID or URL for your course.  Confirm that the course name is the course you selected and click "Yes."
  6. From the Canvas menu, select "Refresh Assignment Details" and a new sheet named "Assignments" will be added with the details of all of the assignments in the course.
  7. Steps  1 - 5 are one-time setup steps.  Once you have done them, you can re-run step 6 at anytime to update the details.
 

Notes

  • The worksheet will contain the following columns
    • AssignmentID - the unique Assignment identifier assigned by Canvas
    • Assignment Name - the assignment name and a link to the assignment in your Canvas course
    • Assignment Group - the name of the group that contains the assignment
    • Published - TRUE/FALSE indicating whether or not the assignment has been published
    • Points Possible - points possible for the assignment
    • Grading Type - one  of points, pass_fail, percent, letter_grade, or gpa_scale
    • Omit from Final Grade - TRUE/FALSE indicating whether the assignment is included in the final grade
    • Submission Type - one or more of discussion_topic, online_quiz, on_paper, none, external_tool, online_text_entry, online_url, online_upload, media_recording, or student_annotation
    • Rubric - the name of the grading rubric used with the assignment or N/A if a rubric is not used
    • Group Assignment - FALSE if not a group assignment, otherwise the name of the group.  If the assignment is setup as a group assignment, but no group is assigned - "ERROR undefined group" (this can happen if a group is deleted after being linked to an assignment)
    • Grade Group Individually - TRUE is group members are graded individually, FALSE if all group members get the same grade
    • Plagiarism detection - one of none, Turnitin, or Vericite
    • Peer Reviews - TRUE is the assignment uses peer reviews, otherwise FALSE
    • Nbr Auto Peer Reviews - number of peer reviews that will automatically be assigned
    • Auto Peer Review Assign Date - date and time when automatically assigned peer reviews will be assigned
  • Once the spreadsheet is populated, it is easy to sort columns or apply filters to look for specific values in a column, for example finding assignments where Published is FALSE, or Peer Reviews is TRUE.
  • This tool is based on James Jones's Adjust All Assignment Dates on One Page tool - the linked page has detailed setup instructions that also apply to this tool.
  • Many thanks to @James  for his work.  Any problems with this tool are my fault, not his!
  • Contact me if you have problems with this tool and I will do my best to resolve them.

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