Canvas tagged a student's submission as "late" but the time of submission is not late

[dgravertq]

A student submitted a post to a discussion board, and Canvas tagged it as "late".

But Canvas reported the submission time as equal to the due date. Thus it appears that the submission was made on time and should not be marked late.

A screenshot is found in the attached jpg file.

Please fix Canvas so that results are consistent:

Either tag the submission as late and report a time of submission that occurs after the due date, or

Leave the submission as "on time" if the submission time equals the due date/time.

Thanks.

[chriscas · Accepted solution]

Hi @dgravertq,

I think what you're seeing here involves wording and numeric precision/rounding/truncating...

Whatever you set your due time at, that is the exact due time (down to the microsecond or perhaps even more precise, I'm not 100% sure).  So saying 11:59pm means 11:59 and 0 seconds, or essentially before 11:59pm (the odds of submitting at 11:59.00 on the dot is incredibly low, but my guess is that would not be considered late if it happened).

Speedgrader, to my knowledge, truncates the submission time to the nearest minute on the display, even though Canvas has more accurate info behind the scenes.  This is perhaps where confusion could start to come in.  Even though Speedgrader may show 11:59pm, it was almost for sure some seconds after 11:59.00.  Thus, the late tag is applied, but the time shown in Speedgrader gets truncated and appears to be equal to the due time.

I know I recall discussions in the community in the past around this issue.  Some people would like Canvas to truncate the seconds off so the submission for the late tag (meaning students could submit at 11:59 and 59 seconds and be okay), while others feel the current way things work is more appropriate.  I don't have too much of a preference myself, though I'd always recommend that students try not to wait until the last actual 60 seconds to submit things just in case (it's just an invitation for trouble, though I know technically should still be allowed).

I hope this helps a little bit.  Others may also share their knowledge and opinions on this issue if they this thread, especially if anything I said here is inaccurate.

-Chris