Student lacks paper clip icon for attaching files to Assignment Comment

[MsTia]

A student can't attach a file to an Assignment Comment because there's no paper clip icon visible on their end. This consistently happened to another of my students a year or two ago, also.

The paper clip icon is missing (as well as the new icon to record videos and screen capture with auto captioning). It should appear to the right of the smiley emoji, near the "Submit" button.

I can get more info on the student's device, OS version, etc -- but meanwhile, here's an image from the student:

View from student's account

Ideas? Any help appreciated.

[chriscas]

Hi @MsTia,

I get this exact same experience acting as a student when assignment enhancements are not enabled.  It appears there is no file/media icon available during the initial submission, but once the initial submission is made, a comment can be added and the attachment and media options are available there.  I don't know if this is intentional or not, as I've seen some teachers say students are using the comment attachment button to get around restrictions set up for file submission assignments (but with assignment enhancements on, the attachment and media comment buttons are available right away).  Because of the inconsistency, I'd recommend that you contact Canvas support to report this behavior and see if they can clarify the expectations.

-Chris

[MsTia]

Thanks, Chris! Alas, attachment icon does NOT appear after initial submission. Course Settings > Feature Options doesn't include an item called "Assignment Enhancements" for me. I'd love to enable it, but wonder it perhaps it's not available to Free for Teachers (FFT) users. I can't find any information on that in the release notes. Ideas?

[chriscas]

Hi @MsTia,

I can't find any definitive info on whether the Assignment Enhancements feature is intended to be available in the Free-for-teacher Canvas instance or not.  The behavior you're seeing even without the enhancements feature still seems a bit strange to me though.  I'm going to move this question over to the FFT forum, where some other FFT users may be able to confirm what you're seeing.  If either me or one of the community managers can find definitive info about assignment enhancements for FFT, we'll post that as a reply too!

-Chris