How do you unsubmit an assignment?

[spadilla42]

I submitted the wrong assignment and I dont know how to unsubmit it .

[Steve_Watts · Accepted solution]

Hi  @spadilla42 and welcome to the Canvas Community
It's not possible for a student to remove a file they've submitted to an assignment. However, as long as the deadline for the assignment has not passed, you should be able to submit a second file. I suggest that you contact the teacher for this assignment to tell them that they can ignore your first submission and check with them that it's OK for you to submit a new file.
Teachers also can't remove student submissions so if the teacher decides that your first submission does need to be deleted they will need to log a support call with Instructure - the company who provide Canvas - and ask if one of their engineers can remove your original submission. Hopefully this won't be necessary and the teacher can just ignore your first file and mark the new one you upload.

[aloomis · Accepted solution]

Students must be allowed to unsubmit their work. If they turn it in then realize they forgot to add something I as a teacher have to make a phone call to Canvas/Instructure to have it removed??!! Huh? Google Classroom totally allows this and I have no idea why Canvas would not. Even allowing them to unsubmit after the due date then resubmit should be no problem. Why Canvas do you lock in a students submission? And a teacher can't even unlock it. This is crazy to me. 

[Platt1 · Accepted solution]

Agreed. I wonder who I should contact to give this feedback?  There are multiple reasons why you would employ an unsubmit feature: students need to make changes, teachers give feedback and then have the students take the feedback and resubmit, group work, issues of cheating, etc. At least teachers should be able to unsubmit work. Canvas should consider this. 

[Steve_Watts · Accepted solution]

Hi  @spadilla42 and welcome to the Canvas Community
It's not possible for a student to remove a file they've submitted to an assignment. However, as long as the deadline for the assignment has not passed, you should be able to submit a second file. I suggest that you contact the teacher for this assignment to tell them that they can ignore your first submission and check with them that it's OK for you to submit a new file.
Teachers also can't remove student submissions so if the teacher decides that your first submission does need to be deleted they will need to log a support call with Instructure - the company who provide Canvas - and ask if one of their engineers can remove your original submission. Hopefully this won't be necessary and the teacher can just ignore your first file and mark the new one you upload.

[aloomis · Accepted solution]

Students must be allowed to unsubmit their work. If they turn it in then realize they forgot to add something I as a teacher have to make a phone call to Canvas/Instructure to have it removed??!! Huh? Google Classroom totally allows this and I have no idea why Canvas would not. Even allowing them to unsubmit after the due date then resubmit should be no problem. Why Canvas do you lock in a students submission? And a teacher can't even unlock it. This is crazy to me. 

[bryan-henning · Accepted solution]

You can set an assignment to allow unlimited submissions so students don't need to unsubmit.  They can just resubmit the assignment and you will see both submissions and the timestamp in SpeedGrader.

[Platt1 · Accepted solution]

Agreed. I wonder who I should contact to give this feedback?  There are multiple reasons why you would employ an unsubmit feature: students need to make changes, teachers give feedback and then have the students take the feedback and resubmit, group work, issues of cheating, etc. At least teachers should be able to unsubmit work. Canvas should consider this. 

[KirstenNash]

I had a similar issue where a student submitted a Google doc to a Canvas assignment - then when they were doing peer edits (separately), she needed to share the file with another student. Google was telling her that she was no longer the owner of the document. In GC this would be easy, the student would just unsubmit. In Canvas, now she is having to make a copy of her document and create a new one, which is burdensome and not good practice for kids who are just learning how to organize their own files. I don't understand. 

[NathanGalindo]

I accidentally submitted a assignment and I was drawing headphones one of them looked like a male part I don’t want to get in trouble with my teacher and parents 

[SusanNiemeyer]

Hi Nathan,

Unfortunately, you can't delete your submission. I suggest contacting your teacher and explaining what happened. Good luck!

[JohnGodward]

So, I have a student who submitted the wrong work to an assignment and the assignment now shows complete for them on their calendar and the only way I can resolve this is to call and request that an engineer fix this?  This seems like a lot of extra work when a simple "unsubmit" or "show assignment as unsubmitted" option would resolve this issue.

[ElizabethGarza1]

I agree - students and teachers should have the option to unsubmit assignments - and teachers should have the ability to see the record or submitted assignments.

The workaround we found was to allow for unlimitted attempts. But this doesn't actually communicate to students that they have the power to resolve this on their own.

[Chris_Hofer]

Hello.  I found this Feature Idea that seems to align with this conversation.

Enable students to delete their assignment submission

If you want, go ahead and leave a comment on this Feature Idea, and also consider giving it a star rating.  Here is info on that process:

• How do idea conversations work in the Instructure Community?
• What is the feature development process for Instructure products?

[Fiona9]

Please help!  A student accidentally submitted her peer evaluation of all of her group members as their group project assignment (as the due date for both the group assignment and the peer evaluation is the same) and we could not find any way for her or me (the instructor) to remove it as quickly as possible.  It could be one of the biggest embarrassments a student can have!  We both have been trying frantically to delete or unsubmit the assignment but could not find such a feature.  Can someone please let me know how to unsubmit the assignment as it is not possible to not provide such an important feature?

Instructors could quit using Canvas entirely if such a function/feature is not available as we cannot embarrass students this way by not providing opportunities for them to take corrective actions immediately.