Why does Canvas Permit Assignment Submissions After the Until Date?

[burgerk]

Dear All,

What I am going to discuss is driving me insane (my psychiatrist told me to tell Canvas "Thank you.") because the behavior of Canvas in this situation completely flies in the face of rational logical behavior.

Here is the situation. I have assignments and quizzes which are all configured so the Available From date is empty, and the Due Date and Until Dates are set to be the same exact moment in time. For example, Assignment X is configured so the Available From Date field is empty, the Due Date field is 2023-01-15 23:59, and the Until Date is 2023-01-15 23:59.

I never accept late assignments.

Everything I have read about Canvas in this forum and by searching the internet tells me that if I want to prevent students from submitting assignments late, then I have to configure the assignment's Until Date to be same value as the assignment's Due Date, and then, voilà, no late submissions will be allowed.

I have done this. ✓

However, some students are still submitting assignments AFTER the Due/Until Date, i.e., which in my dictionary means they are submitting assignments LATE.

For example, for Assignment X, student A submitted their solution 7.8 days late, i.e., after the 2023-01-15 23:59 deadline, which means they submitted their solution sometime during the day of 2023-01-22. And I know it was submitted 7.8 days late because that is what the gradebook tray tells me.

Now, I do not have a late submission policy configured in the GradeBook Settings because since I set the Until Date of every assignment equal to the Due Date, then this means students cannot submit a solution after the Until Date, i.e., late, doesn't it? That seems to be what I have read in multiple places.

So, I have no clue about what is going on, other than Canvas is behaving in a way which is contradictory to the way this forum and the internet says it is supposed to behave.

It seems to me that I should not have to configure a late submission policy in Gradebook Settings because I don't have a late submission policy because I dont accept any assginment submission after the Due/Until Date. That is why I set the Due and Until Dates of each assignment to be the same!

Now, I have read about the way Canvas is supposed to accept a late submission, i.e., one after the Due Date, by flagging the submission as Late and then forcing the instructor to have to decide whether to accept the late submission or not. [Incidentally, as an instructor who has between 400-800 students in all of my courses each semester, that particular "feature" is not at all convenient. I wouldn't have the time to look at potentially dozens of late assignment submissions and click whatever buttons I have to click to deny the submission.] So, this seems to be what is happening, BUT I DON'T WANT IT TO HAPPEN, and I have no knowledge of what to do to stop it from happening (If I did, I wouldn't be here).

Again, I want to set the Until Date to be the last moment in time for which the student can submit a solution and AFTER THAT MOMENT PASSES, I DO NOT WANT STUDENTS TO BE ABLE TO SUBMIT LATE SOLUTIONS BECAUSE I AM NOT GOING TO ACCEPT THEM LATE ANYWAY BECAUSE I DO NOT ACCEPT LATE ASSIGNMENTS.

Okay that's the situation. I am hoping now that someone can explain:

1. What exactly is Canvas doing when it allows my students to submit solutions AFTER THE UNTIL DATE?

2. Why is Canvas doing that?

3. And, how do I stop Canvas from doing that?

Thank you.

[TrishaMeyer1]

I'm not sure because I don't use the "Until" feature, but maybe that's the last date the assignment can be accessed, that is opened. If the student accesses/opens the assignment prior to that date, maybe they can still submit, especially if they haven't logged out of Canvas in the meantime.

Why not just set your Late Policy to assign a Zero automatically?

[burgerk]

Hello TrishaMeyer1,
Setting the Late Policy to assign a 0 automatically is what I was thinking I would need to do so thank you for mentioning it.

[TrishaMeyer1]

Here's the Canvas Guide for setting a late policy. You would set it to 100% deduction with a lowest possible grade of 0%.

How do I apply a Late Submission policy in the Gradebook? 

And regarding your update, yes, LTI tools behave according to different rules. In fact, the late deduction policy may not even work with an LTI. Some settings don't work with the Google Assignments LTI, for example, because Canvas doesn't "see" the submission the same way. So you may need to experiment a bit to see what method works with this particular external tool.

 

[chriscas]

Hi @burgerk,

Can you clarify whether the things showing late are quizzes or assignments?  My guess is that they're going to be all quizzes, as I've never seen this happen with an assignment in my almost 10 years as a Canvas admin.

With quizzes, what can happen is that a student starts the quiz, but never hits the submit button...  This essentially leaves the quiz sitting "in limbo" until the next time the student accesses Canvas after the quiz accept until date, at which point it will be submitted right then.  If they don't access Canvas for a week, the submission might show 7 days late.

I personally have asked Instructure to either have a background process to the submission at the accept until time instead of having client-side code doing it, or when the submission is made after the fact, make the submission date equal the accept until date.  Unfortunately, neither of these suggestions has been implemented.

Can you tell us if this fits what you're seeing, or if you are experiencing totally different?

-Chris

[Ron_Bowman]

@burgerk -

I agree with @chriscas .  Something does not seem right with what is happening to you.  Looking at the instructor guide for assignments on setting availability - what you are doing with due and until date/time should be doing what you want.  There are a lot of scenarios in that guide, but what you do is one of them and it states that with your procedure that should be it.  It even states that you do not need a from date.  My recommendation on that would be to put a from date - even if it is the first day of class for all assignments(no reason to do it, but just a thought for completeness).

As for quizzes, once again, here is the instructor guide for quiz setting availability - at the top of that information is the following:

"

Quizzes have an autosubmit feature tied to the Until (lock) date, which may affect student submissions. Only quiz attempts that have been started are auto-submitted. Common quiz scenarios and date results include the following:  

• No dates: quiz is never marked late and autosubmitted at course conclude (see course settings)
• Due date only: quiz is marked late at Due date and autosubmitted at course conclude (see course settings)
• Due date with Until date: quiz is marked late at Due date and autosubmitted at Until date
• Time limit: quiz is autosubmitted when time expires. The time limit will still expire if a student navigates away from the quiz. The quiz will autosubmit when the student navigates to the quiz page again.
• Time limit with Until date: quiz is autosubmitted when time expires unless the Until date expires first

The underlined part above says that the quizzes should be auto submitted at the time limit or the until date whichever occurs first

Without seeing exactly how your assignments and quizzes are configured, I would say you did everything correctly and that Canvas is not doing what it says it is doing.  

I would contact your Canvas admins at your institution and see what they say about it - or have them send a question of to Canvas Support - where they can look at your class directly to see what is happening.

By the way, thanks for the great detailed write up - that helps.

Ron

[burgerk]

Dear All,

Thank you all so much for your replies and valuable feedback.

I looked in the grade center and it is the Canvas Assignments which some students are submitting late; there is not a single quiz submitted late. For our quizzes, I know the Due Date and Until Date of every quiz are configured to be the same date and time and that seems to be preventing students from submitting quizzes late.

I am starting to suspect the problem is due to the way our digital textbook is integrated with Canvas. Our textbook is a customized zyBook. If you are not familar with zyBooks, they are a company marketing digital textbooks, which are supposed to be more dynamic and interactive than traditional print books. The Canvas Assignments in the course (not the quizzes) are tied to exercises in the zyBook, i.e., as the student reads the assigned chapters in the zyBook, they complete exercises in the zyBook and somehow the zyBook "talks" to the Canvas grade center where the zyBook scores for a particular Assignment are stored.

I wonder if the problem is due to this: a student might be able to complete or return and and re-complete zyBook textbook exercises—which are part of Canvas Assignments—after the Assignment deadline and when they do, perhaps the zyBook writes the student's new score into the Canvas grade center, overwriting the old score, and then Canvas marks the Assignment as late.

If that is, in fact, what is happening then it all make sense to me now. To determine this, I will now attempt to determine if I can replicate this behavior to determine if this is how Canvas Assignments are being submitted late after the Canvas Assignment deadline, i.e,, the Due/Until Date, which are configured to be the same date and time.

Thank you all for your help. I sincerely appreciate it.

KRB

[Ron_Bowman]

@burgerk -

Thanks for the update.  I don't use third party integrations (well I did once and it was a disaster and not worth the hassle), so I have no idea what the interaction is between them and Canvas with issues like what you are seeing.

At least you have narrowed it down and can now test it out.  Then that information can be passed on to the correct people.

Good Luck.  

ron

[RebeccaBarry]

This has come up for me and my TAs as well. Our IT people have thought that it might be that the student OPENS the assignment before the due date, but doesn't SUBMIT until after the due date (i.e. leaves that tab open and comes back to it after midnight). I agree that Canvas shouldn't allow this...but that was the only explanation we could think of! It's weird that this can happen though.

The only way around this I've found is to sort these late assignments in the grade book, assign a zero to all of them, and paste in the message "Unfortunately, late submissions can't get credit." You don't have to click through all the late assignments; you can do it quick and easy from the grade book view.

Hope this helps!!