Changing the 'Submit Assignment' Button

[cbishop3]

Students tell us that the "Submit Assignment" button is confusing, because the term "submit" implies to turn in. Changing the work "Submit" to "Begin" (or something similar) would be less confusing, and using "Submit Assignment" for when the assignment is actually be submitted for grading.

This idea has been developed and deployed to Canvas

For more information, please read through the Canvas Deploy Notes (2021-03-31).

[siouxgeonz]

I've learned from the comments that  in many cases students are submitting assignments so it is appropriate.   However, in some cases "submit" is the path to where they would type in text (and then "submit" it),    so they would be clicking "submit" when, in fact, they hadn't actually answered a question or made a file to submit.  It can be a confusing label in that case.

[saelterman]

It seems that this is more of a call to request Canvas to allow end-users (at any level I suppose) to edit the resource texts instead of dictating them.

If instructor A feels "Begin Submission" is more suitable than "Submit Assignment" perhaps that instructor needs to be have the ability to make the change to that label text.

[Stef_retired]

 @saelterman ​, I'm not a programmer, so I can't speculate as to how long or difficult a coding task that might be, or as to if or when such an implementation might ever come to pass. A quick interim solution is that those who are using text entry type assignments who feel the Submit Assignment button isn't sufficiently clear can put instructions in the assignment description: "Click on the Submit Assignment button to reveal the text entry box where you will compose your assignment submission."

I will reiterate that in over five years of teaching writing intensive courses in Canvas--entailing literally thousands of assignment submissions, mostly of the file upload type, but a fair number that were text entry--I have yet to encounter a student who did not understand how the Submit Assignment process works. Every one of our courses provides a link to a Canvas student orientation course, which is really more of a resource course. Of course, the link to How do I submit an online assignment? is prominently displayed there.

[saelterman]

As a programmer but without much knowledge of Canvas, I would say the amount of effort would depend on how localization is currently handled. Of course the benefits would extend far beyond the specific button that's the subject of this thread.

[Stef_retired]

Perhaps,  @saelterman ​--but the perceived benefits might be a philosophical conversation for another venue. One of the features of Canvas that has made life easy for my students and for the faculty I train is its predictability and consistency across multiple courses and schools. It's why renaming navigation buttons has been such a hot topic of conversation over the years.

[thompsli]

I agree that "begin" would be a much worse word than "submit" for my typical use case. Since the text entry option doesn't let them save, I generally turn it off entirely for any assignment of meaningful depth to make it harder for them to lose their work.

A typical assignment "workflow" for me would be to give them a math problem where they need to read through several paragraphs of text/instructions/problem set-up, then think about how to solve the problem, possibly collect some data, solve the problem (probably on scratch paper, but depending on the class, they may also be using another program to generate graphs, to do statistical processing, or to create geometric constructions), then open up Google Doc to type up their work, explain/defend their solution process, and answer the question posed in the assignment. After they've done all of that, they should then submit the assignment (generally as a Google Doc). I generally tell them to open the instructions for these assignments on Mondays, read through them, work on them all week, and submit them on Friday. (Simple assessment of smaller skill chunks is done with quizzes - I use assignments for larger things that they should be working on over more than one sitting.)

I see no value to them clicking "begin" to bring up the submission page on Monday when they should just be reading through the assignment and doing a lot of non-Canvas-based mathematical work that day and not submitting their assignment for days and days. I worry some of them would then panic and turn in quickly-produced junk assignments since some students would think that the submission page couldn't be left without submitting their assignment "for real" or something, or think that it had a countdown timer as some quizzes do.

[jkeeler1]

Our Canvas instance is deployed in a HigherEd venue, and most often the assignments are document submissions. By the time a student reaches college they usually know what 'submit assignment' means. Changing the name of the button to 'Begin' rather than 'Submit Assignment' would probably confuse students, because they would not know if the assignment was submitted correctly, and that would lead to a list of other issues.

[siouxgeonz]

Yes, it seems that "submit " is the right word most of .the time.

I work with students using D2L and their interface has a place to enter text, and a  button that says "Upload file" or "add file."  So... the two options are distinct.

At the bottom of the page is "submit" for when they've done all that. This makes things clear to students.

It's not without its foibles, though:   you *can't* just send text.   You have to upload a file. That gets very confusing..

[catherine_yanko]

I would suggest "Open Assignment" rather than Submit or Begin Assignment.

[djoubert]

Sorry, guys.  As stated above, more of a tweak than a modification.  I cannot see this as an advantage to my middle school students.  They get the various stages done outside of Canvas, then submit the assignment when the due date comes up.  If I want various stages to be submitted, I just create a separate ungradable assignment for them, then have the final assignment handed in.  In fact, if I want the various stages to be graded, I just do it that way.

Sorry.  I'd rather Canvas concentrate on bigger fish that need frying.