[Assignments] Move or Delete Incorrectly Submitted Assignments

If a student submits an assignment to say week 2 folder when it should have been submitted to week 3, currently there is no way to move that assignment to the correct location as the Teacher.  This core functionality exists in all other LCS.LMS and should be considered for inclusion in Canvas's core modules.

 

Brought over from the old Canvas Community

Submitted by: Michael Black

Date: 6/3/2011

Votes: 112

292 Comments
ezaurova
Community Participant

Personally, I'm nervous about your suggestion.  I've actually come across situations in the past where I've been glad that records of student attempts couldn't be modified by the student.  For example, the "I know I uploaded it, I don't know why it's not showing up" would become a lot easier if they could say "oh, I must have accidentally deleted my submission".  Also, if a student resubmitted an assignment because one question was missing or came out blurry, I can see whether they took the opportunity to adjust any other questions.  I guess as long as some record is kept and accessible by the instructor, I would be okay with it.  But I would not want the case where the student could just delete all record of their initial submissions.

nnorman
Community Novice

In my case, I have an assignment that the class can 't get to.  I wanted to un-publish the assignment to avoid confusion.  But because there was a submission by a single student, I can not unpublish.  Of course I would be happy with just being able to unpublish the assignment with perhaps a warning about there being submissions.   I did up vote this item.

nnorman
Community Novice

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think this is about the teacher deleting submissions.  I'm not sure how I'd feel if that included the student's ability to delete submissions.  I don't think I'd be in favor of that.

tbunag
Community Champion

Considering the use case involving pre-requisites, perhaps a better option would be to be able to "Mute" a student's submission or something similar, instead of deleting it entirely.  This wouldn't help the published/unpublished issue, but I see this as a very different use case.  An additional benefit of being able to mute a particular submission would be in streamlining grading for when a student has submitted multiple copies of the same assignment.

ezaurova
Community Participant

Thanks, Nathaniel.  I had interpreted the idea as creating the ability to delete a submission in general, but I do now see that this would be for faculty only.  That being the case, I actually think Mark brought up a great use-case regarding students trying to get around per-requisites.  Also, Nathaniel, I've run into a similar issue before regarding not being able to unpublish an assignment because there had been a submission, which was actually mine.  It was a bit annoying.  Okay, I'm voting this feature up.

macaulayl
Community Member

We had an instance where a file got uploaded that had tracked changes/comments that were not professional and the student was mortified that comments they didn't make (a friend or spouse had peer reviewed before she submitted) were there for the faculty member to see.  But there was no way for me to remove it.  I agree that this should be an admin or teacher level function and not a student level function.

915085611
Community Explorer

I like this suggestion a lot--something that causes Canvas to treat that submission as invalid (mute the submission or require a re-submission--resetting the student view of that assignment) while also keeping the content of an incorrect submission would potentially solve the issues that have been raised.

My use-case for this is in a composition class. I have separate "peer-review" and "final submission" assignments for papers, and there are times when a student posts a peer-review draft to the final submission. This causes the student to see the final submission as completed while the peer review has not been completed. If I could click something in the "final submission" assignment that shows the student that the final draft was not actually submitted, the student would then have the correct information in his or her to-do list.

915085611
Community Explorer

I, too, have run into this before.

1191658422
Community Novice

I'm trying to change the group settings but am unable to do so because  Students have already submitted homework on this assignment, so group settings cannot be changed.  being able to remove that submission would allow me access to those settings and allow the group to submit the work.

kona
Community Champion

 @1191658422 , this is a good use case for why this feature is needed. Right now the only thing I can think of is deleting the assignment and recreating it, which is definitely not idea. Smiley Sad