Is there a way to lock an assignment so students can't work outside of class before the due date?

[lesliea_neilsen]

My question is that I assign a lot of essays and don't want students working on them outside of class to prevent using AI or other cheating.  I usually lock it and make it due at the end of class, but they get upset thinking they ran out of time even though I'll unlock it the next class.  Sometimes this happens when most kids finish within one block but a handful need more time.

Is there a better work around?

[greydon · Accepted solution]

Hello @lesliea_neilsen 

You have a few options - if the course is published and you want them having full access to the course but not specific assignments at specific times your best bet is to use the "from" and "until" dates within the "assign to" box at the bottom of edit in an assignment. This is essentially a window of accessibility for the students to actually submit an assignment, discussion, quiz, etc. You can also single out more "assign to" boxes and give different students different windows to access and submit. Hopefully this helps.

https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Instructor-Guide/What-is-the-difference-between-assignment-due-da... 

[TrishaMeyer1]

Hi @lesliea_neilsen ,

How are you assigning the essay assignments? If you are using the Google Docs integration, you may be able to change the settings of the source folder in your Google Drive. When you use the Google integration [Submission Type=External Tool->Google Assignments (LTI 1.3)], Canvas creates a folder in your Google Drive that contains the template and all the student copies. If you change the settings on that folder to Restricted, I think it will prevent students from making changes to their documents, but I've never tested this process.