Students cannot enter assignment from Grades page

[tammi_brandon]

We suggest that our learners periodically check their grades from the Grades page. When they find that an assignment is incomplete/ungraded, they often try to enter the assignment from the link on the Grades page. However, in doing so, the assignment appears as "No Preview Available". They have to return to the Home page and open the assignment there.

Is there a way to change the "No Preview Available" to a message that says "Return to the Home page to open this assignment."? Or, is there a way to add a note to the top of the Grades page that says something similar.

Our instructors field several questions telling learners to enter the assignment from the Home page instead of the Grades page, and we would rather have them focus on teaching the course content instead.

Thanks!

[Chris_Hofer]

Hi @tammi_brandon ...

I can understand why that might be confusing to students, but "No Preview Available" is really for viewing their assignment once submitted and any potential feedback from their instructor.  Take a look at this screen shot from my own sandbox course where I masqueraded as a "Test Student":

If a student clicks on the name of the assignment in the breadcrumb trail (in my case, the name of the assignment is "O365 Test Document"), that should take the students directly to the assignment instructions.  It's a bit quicker than having to click on the "Home" page again and then finding the assignment name to click on.

Hope this helps a bit.  Let Community members know if you have any other questions about this...thanks!

[tammi_brandon]

Thank you for your reply. Is there a way to change the "No Preview Available" message to a custom message? Or, is there a way to redirect students to the assignment so they do not see that message? We get so many questions about this.

[Chris_Hofer]

Hello again, @tammi_brandon ...

To be quite honest, I really don't know.  There may be ways to change this through custom programming on the back-end of Canvas, but I do not know if that would even be possible.  Also, I am not aware of any way to change things on the front end of Canvas, either.  Something else to keep in mind is that if this were possible, it may change "No Preview Available" for everyone at your school...not just your courses.  And, not every instructor at your school may want that changed in his/her course.  Also, making a change like this would then not match the Canvas Guides given here in the Canvas Community website...so people might get confused looking for your custom terminology that isn't listed in official Canvas Guides.

Again, I do understand why this could be confusing for your students...but I think if you can come up with some ways to steer your students away from what they're currently doing to the "correct" way to get to your assignments, that's going to be the best option.  This may be in the form of announcements at the start of the course, a short video explanation, or some other means to get the message across.

Sorry I don't have better info for you at this time...but I hope this might give you some ideas of things to try...