Why do students get full credit when they submit a late assignment?

[kevin_redding]

I create a quiz and set a due date/time.

A student submits the quiz LONG after the deadline (2 weeks) and still gets full credit.

Does Canvas not understand what a due date IS?   Back when I was a student, if you submitted an assignment well after the deadline, you got no credit at all.  I guess I made the assumption that the phrase "due date" means the same in Canvas as when we use it out the real world.  Clearly that does not seem to be the case.

Or is there some setting I need to use to cause the due date to actually have some consequence?

[chriscas · Accepted solution]

Hi @kevin_redding,

By default, submissions made after the due date/time will have a "late" tag visible to you in SpeedGrader (and may change the shading of the cell on the Grades page, but it would be up to you in those cases to determine what kind of penalty a late submission would have.  In my opinion, if you want to give 0 credit for late submissions, you should set the due date/time and the accent until date/time to be identical, so students can't even make a late submission.

If you want Canvas to assign automatic penalties for late submissions, you'll want to check out the How do I apply a Late Submission policy in the Gra... - Instructure Community - 965 guide.  If you use the guide to set up a late submission policy, the deduction will be applied to any submission marked as late.  Canvas will automatically mark online submission as late after the due date, but you'd need to manually set things to late if you're using other submission types (like on paper), as Canvas has no way to know when those things were turned in.

I hope this helps!

-Chris

[kevin_redding]

OK, thanks!  That does help.  But I think it is weird that you have to set a blanket Late Submission policy that applies to every assignment in the course.  Not very flexible, is that?   Would be better to have the ability to apply different policies for different types of assignments.  Guess that would be a new feature request...

[chriscas]

Hi @kevin_redding,

Yes, unfortunately, the late policy is current an "all or nothing" for everything in the course.  I know assignment-level settings have been asked about my multiple people, but have no idea if we'll ever see that.  It definitely makes sense pedagogically, but maybe there are tech-side blockers that aren't really obvious to us.  Hopefuly we do see that feature one day!

-Chris