Assignment submitted by one goes in for some other student

[moghe_p]

I am seeing that few of my students have submitted the assignment however their submission goes in for some another student. When that another student opens the submission tab to submit their work, they find that someone else's submission has been posted on their account. Can someone let me know what might be going wrong? How does Canvas assign someone else's submission to some different person?

Thank you.

[Chris_Hofer · Accepted solution]

Good evening, @moghe_p ...

Sorry to see that your question has been sitting out here unanswered since late May 2020.  By chance, do you know if this was a group assignment...where someone from a group was submitting for all students in the group?  That's the only scenario I can think of where this might be possible.  Otherwise, if each student is logged in to their own account, they should not be able to submit work to you via other accounts.

Hope to hear back from you soon on this.  Take care, stay safe, and be well.

[m_jamro]

I did come across this type of situation at least twice, and both times there was same mistake from students, and partially staff can be appraised on this issue.

One student's laptop was damaged so she approached a class fellow with a USB to upload her files as it was the last date of the submission. The friend opened his laptop and logged-in and browsed the assignment page and submitted her files. That is very problematic for the Canvas VLE, if you open your account and try uploading files in the Assignment Folder. If Tutor has set ONE ATTEMPT, then you will not be allowed to upload again, however; if the tutor has allowed 2 Attempts then, your newer submission will replace the previously submitted file(s). I have seen two cases in my Canvas modules and both were linked to the same issue. Partially caused by students and tutor's relaxed submission criteria. Sometimes tutor allows multiple attempts to encourage students to submit the draft version and seek feedback and then can submit the final version with improved quality. This however can turn into serious challenges when students do not log in from their owner's account. If students want to help their friend fellow then the fellow must log in onto Canvas account.

In the second case, one student submitted the file from the lab, and when we analysed the case we found out that another student who used that PC earlier, did not log out correctly, and the next student-submitted assignment thinking that it was from his account. 

Conclusion: Canvas is trustworthy but blind, students must ensure that they are logged onto their own's account. If they see anyone else's logged in the lab PC but they want to use that PC, then they must log out that person, restart the PC and log in again. The tutor must educate the students about these issues when setting more than ONE attempt for submission.