Availability of PDF Annotation Tool on Canvas LMS Web Version

[jdurancal]

Hello everyone,

I'm currently exploring the PDF annotation tool on the Canvas Student App, which allows students to highlight, annotate, and bookmark directly within PDFs. Does anyone know if this tool or a similar one is available through the Canvas LMS web interface?

Thanks in advance for your help!

[chriscas · Accepted solution]

Hi @jdurancal,

I don't think the screenshot provided is the Canvas app itself, but probably whatever PDF viewing app your device has installed on it.  Canvas does have a specific assignment submission type where students can use the DocViewer tool to annotate an instructor-provided file, but that ability is limited to those specific assignments as far as I know.

So, with that being said, Canvas itself wouldn't have general annotation abilities on the web either.  There are plenty of Windows or Mac apps that do provide annotation capabilities for PDF files though, similar to what you're seeing from what I think is the app on your mobile device.  The annotation assignments I mentioned above do work on the web version of Canvas as well (just wanted to mention that for completeness).

I could be off the mark on this, and if I am I'm sure someone else will comment and let us know.  I hope this info might help though.

-Chris

[jdurancal]

Hi Christopher,

thank you for your answer.

I'm a little confused, because I found the same functionality, in this case, is for doing annotation in an assignment in the Student APP https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Canvas-Student-Android-Guide/How-do-I-submit-a-PDF-assignment-wit...

At the same time, I'm checking this kind of APP on my smartphone and haven't gotten it.

Any suggestion?

Thanks!

[chriscas]

Hi @jdurancal,

The annotation assignment is a specific thing that a teacher would set up in a course.  For that specific type of assignment, Canvas on the web and the Canvas apps would provide some annotation tools for a student (the same functionality teachers have in SpeedGrader.  That functionality is only available for the specific file the teacher chooses for the assignment though, it's not meant to be a student note taking experience or anything like that.  I hope this helps!

-Chris