Can I make assignments for Test Student and upload responses?

[nreesor]

I will be using Canvas for the first time this spring. My roster is full, but since the semester hasn’t started yet, no students have submitted essays! Yet I would really like to try Speed Grader and see how it works so that I can decide whether to have students submit paper copies, which has been my custom, or electronic copies. I write lots of comments on essays, so I need to decide whether Speed Grader gives me the flexibility I need in this regard.

So, does anyone know if I can make an artificial assignment, assign it only to Test Student, upload a sample essay for Test Student, and “grade” this essay using Speed Grader?

[James · Accepted solution]

 @nreesor  

You can upload a file as a test student using the student view and then use SpeedGrader to grade it.

I personally wouldn't do that in a live course though with a fake assignment. If you want to do playing around with things, you can use a sandbox course. If you don't have access to a sandbox course or cannot create a course, then you should have a Test and/or Beta instance of Canvas that you can play with. Changes there aren't permanent and so I would create the assignment there and not worried about differentiated assignments. The beta instance is reset every week.

Here are a couple of lessons from the Canvas Instructor Guide about the beta and test instance.

• How do I access the Canvas beta environment as an instructor? 
• https://community.canvaslms.com/docs/DOC-13011-4152719755 

[nreesor]

James, thanks very much. I contacted my University support staff and asked about sandboxing. We don't have access to that feature, but we can create personal project sites, which the staff person said should provide the same functions. So, I'm going to try that.

[nreesor]

I created a project site according to the suggestion from our University IT staff. This allowed me experiment. Thanks, James Jones, for pointing me in the right direction.