Two students lack paper clip icons for attaching files to Assignment Comment

[MsTia]

Two students 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.

For both, 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.

One student is on a Mac; the other, on a Win 11 machine.

View from student's account

Ideas? Any help appreciated. This post was kindly moved to the FFT forum, in case anyone here has some insight.

[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

[MsTia]

Thanks, Chris. Hoping someone can help us figure this out. Two students, with different OS on updated machines (one Windows, one Mac), are experiencing this.

[MsTia · Accepted solution]

Well, Canvas Help came through and I'll post their answer here, in case it helps someone else. The students had indeed identified a "comment" field on their assignments, but that one, in that location, does NOT allow them to attach files. Instead, they needed to navigate to the assignment's SUBMISSION DETAILS page and scroll to the bottom. That's where they can find a comment field that does in fact sport either a nifty paper clip icon or the words "Attach File." Boom! They can attach files like pros now.

As always, I'd given my students the link  How do I view assignment comments from my instructor? -- but they hadn't read through it and assumed they were in the right spot. Understandable. Turns out I needed help interpreting their screenshots, too. Thanks, Johnny! LMGTFY, for sure. But I did need the help.