How do I create an online assignment to be filled out directly in Canvas, like a quiz with essay questions?

[lazar_konforti]

I want to create an assignment where students can answer questions directly in a text box. When I create an online assignment, under "Online Entry Options", I see a box that says "Text Entry". However, selecting that doesn't seem to do anything at all. There is no way to create questions for students to answer.

It seems that the only way to do this is to create a "Quiz", not an "Assignment". However, I also want to be able to award an overall holistic grade for the quiz, like you can do for assignments. Unfortunately, the quizzes force you to assign a weight to each question. 

This is for simple weekly assignments where students have to answer a few basic questions about the assigned readings. I want the whole exercise to be worth 1 point (it's essentially a free participation point in my class). But if I make a quiz with three questions about that week's reading, I have to assign a value to each question, which automatically makes my quiz worth 3 points. If next week's quiz has four questions, it will be worth four points. Not only will these weekly assignments be unequally weighted, they will, together, count for way more of the final grade than I want them to. 

The only solution seems to be to create a pdf fillable form that students can download, fill out, and then upload so I can grade them on speedgrader... but in that case I might as well not use Canvas at all. 

[Stef_retired]

 @lazar_konforti ‌

I've flipped this over to an open-ended discussion as multiple recommendations may well emerge with no single one being uniquely "correct."

If I were doing this, I'd create it as an assignment of the text entry submission type and would list the three questions in the body of the assignment description; then, using SpeedGrader, I would grade students' submissions with a rubric that has a row for each question—although in your example positing an an assignment worth only one point, using the rubric, while not necessary, would still be eminently feasible if you want to provide feedback for each response separately, as long as you set the assignment to be worth a different number of points than the rubric.