Entry Text Assignments not saving for Students

[KennethLesher]

I am an elementary school teacher who uses Canvas with his students. 

I recently created an assignment for my students that was Text Entry. I wanted Text Entry so that they could see the assignment in the window above the text entry location window and reference it. 

My students ran out of time to complete their entry, so they closed their browser, and went on to the next thing.

When the students returned to the assignment the next day, they clicked Start Assignment, but the option to pull out the 'Saved entry' did not come up. 

I have checked with my district IT support and the team noted I needed to get support here. 

When I am in 'Student View' mode, and follow the steps I shared above I see the option to open the 'Saved Entry'.

How can I get my students accounts to have the same opportunity of saving the Text Entry assignment if they close down Canvas?

This is what I can see in Student View on the Canvas assignment, but the students do not get this box to pop up. They have to start over.

[NoahBoswell · Accepted solution]

Hey @KennethLesher ,

Welcome, and thank you for posting on the Instructure Community!

To my understanding and with what I've experienced myself, I'm pretty sure after so much time the auto save removes itself. I think the primary reason the auto save is there is to ensure that the students can easily recover their work if they accidentally close out of the assignment unintentionally, however, it's not intended to be used as a tool to auto save it overnight. So, if your students waited several hours after closing the assignments to open it again, but you closed it and opened it again within just a few minutes, that's probably why you saw it and they didn't.

Something that I always recommend is having your students write out their response in a google / microsoft word document, and then when they are finished, they can copy and paste their text entry directly into the text entry space. They can then look back at your directions and ensure everything they're typing satisfies your requirements.

I hope this helps you out a bit! Reach out with any additional questions or concerns, we're happy to help you out!

Best,
Noah