Duplicate Assignments in Canvas

[dalyje]

If memory serves me correctly, when I used to copy an assignment into a course, if there was already an assignment with the same name, the copied assignemnt would say "Assignment 2 or Copy" or something along those lines. But recently, and I'm not sure when this started happening, I can have two assignments with the same name in a Canvas course if one of them was copied into the course.

Why is this? I can't create two assignments in the course with the same name, and if I copy an assignment within the course, it adds a copy at the end. 

For those of us who work in a sandbox course and copy a module over to the live course, this is a problem. I've created the same assignment in a course several times, and it's really confusing to students to have two different assignments with the same name, especially when they've turned in the work in one assignment, but the other assignment says it's missing.

Can we at least get some kind of designation or warning that there are two assignments with the same name?

[NoahBoswell]

Hi @dalyje ,

While I don't know the official answer to why it works in this way, it's likely that assignments aren't able to have the same name in Canvas due to how things sync over to the gradebook, the to-do list, and other things like that. However, whatever the reason is, I'm sure it's purposely designed that way to minimize errors and future issues.

Something that we tend to do at our institution is add an underscore and then a letter at the end to help us identify what assignment is what. For example if we have two versions of a test, we will call one of them Unit 1 Exam_A and one of them Unit 1 Exam_B. That way the students know what exam they're taking, and the teachers how to tell which exam is which. The students know not to worry about the underscore and the letters following it, so they're pretty good at just ignoring it. As long as they are easily able to identify in the name of the assignment / quiz what it is, we usually have no issues.

I hope this helps a bit! Always feel welcome to reach out with any additional questions or concerns that you may have, we're happy to help you always!

Best,
Noah