Require resubmit for assignments

When students have done sub-par work, I often require them to resubmit the work so they can practice the skills they were lacking. As of right now, as far as I can tell, I have to create a whole new assignment for it, since I want it to show up in the tracking systems for me and for the student. Super inconvenient, given how often it comes up! Would it be possible to add a simple option for this in SpeedGrader? Basically, I'd just want to check a "resubmit" box and be given the option to set a due date, and then have it fall back into the usual tracking systems for me and the students.

 

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28 Comments
Chris_Hofer
Community Coach
Community Coach

 @mballin ​...

It is already possible for students to re-submit an assignment to you without having to create a brand new assignment in your Canvas course.  Check out this Canvas Guide on how you can view past submissions for the same assignment: How do I view past versions of submissions in SpeedGrader?

mballin
Community Novice

Yes, I know how to have the students resubmit an assignment. It's the tracking that's key here. Right now, I can put a comment in the document asking for a resubmission, but then I have three options: (1) cross my fingers and hope that the students remember to do it even through it's not on their Canvas "to do" list, (2) use a secondary tracking system outside of Canvas to ensure it gets done, or (3) create a whole new assignment so that it can be given a due date within Canvas and therefore be added to the "to do" list for the students and for me. The first one is likely to lead to missing work, the second to confusion, and the third is just more time-consuming than it seems like it ought to be.

asatkins
Community Novice

Great idea, we'll be following this. It's not that we don't know how to have students re-submit assignments, it's that many times they don't, even though they can, so we need a way to sort of MAKE them resubmit it.

biray
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni

This idea has moved to the next stage and will be open for voting among the Canvas Community, from Wed. January 6, 2016 - Wed. April 6, 2016.

Check out this doc for additional details about how the voting process works!

nealc62
Community Member

This just makes so much sense because quality writing is iterative. Thanks for submitting this idea!!

jonathan_cowan
Community Member

To start, I'm totally in favor of this idea in terms of having a way to explicitly communicate to students which assignments must be resubmitted. However, in the absence of such a feature, I've been doing a few things to get students used to the idea of resubmitting assignments. Setting the assignment grading scheme to complete/incomplete, and leveraging the use of modules to provide a visual indicator for students about their progress in the class have been two fairly effective tactics to get students to resubmit their assignments. Also, having students turn in their work via live documents such as Google Docs or Office 365 via Canvas makes the idea of giving feedback and having students engage in revision for all major assignments super attainable. That being said, my whole course hinges on the idea of resubmitting assignments, as I've tried to implement a mastery model of instruction in all my courses, so I take a bit of time to introduce kids to the idea at the start of the course, and get them used to the idea that everything in the class will be done to mastery/proficiency. I published a module to the commons called 'Using Canvas for Mastery Learning: Intro for Students' that might have some useful ideas about how to communicate ideas like this to students. While some of the assignments in the module are pretty specific to that course it came out of, the general scope of it might be useful. I use this video, Navigating Modules and Assignments on Canvas - YouTube , as part of an assignment in the aforementioned module to teach students how to use the visual indicators on the module to know which assignments they need to go back to and revise and resubmit. However, as with any time we're seeking to communicate anything to 150+ kids at once, the more clear and uniform we can be in our message, and the more reliable and consistent our systems are, the better the outcome. Which leads me to think that making some sort of feature within the assignment that clearly communicates the expectation for students to resubmit until they have met 'x' level of achievement would be super valuable.

bclark3
Community Novice

Hi,

I am new to the community, since my school has just begun using Canvas.  I really do like the idea of resubmission of assignments, if there is a way of preserving both an early draft of the assignment and the later one.  I feel that the learning process would be best supported if both the draft and later version were available to view, since when grading, you really need to be able to see what the person did the first time around and what you asked them to fix. 

My two cents!

Brian Clark

Hartford Seminary

corey_jeffers
Community Novice

Great idea! I love the resubmission option for students, but I would love a way to prompt the student to resubmit and have a different icon in speedgrader indicating that I'm aware of the submission but I've prompted for a resubmission. Orange circle for submitted, green check-mark for graded, blank for unsubmitted, and a recycle symbol for "re-submission prompted."

 @kristi_levy ​, do you think this would be valuable?

jonathan_cowan
Community Member

That detail you brought up--in addition to the recycle idea, which makes a lot of sense--'blank for unsubmitted,' would be clutch. As it is, the orange circle can show up if an assignment has been manually marked as incomplete from the grade book, even if the student hasn't submitted the assignment. Some consistent way to indicate unsubmitted as opposed to 'incomplete,' or to essentially parse the term 'incomplete' and represent the ways that idea could manifest within a course visually, would be super helpful.

jsparks
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni

Hello everyone,

Thank you for this suggestion.  We can research this for possible inclusion in a future update to the assignments workflows. As any implementation or delivery of this feature is more than six months away, I suggest we archive this conversation for now. I have added this idea to my backlog of possible features.

Regards,

Jason