how to edit a submitted assignment on canvas

Canvas How-To: Assignments

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• Canvas Administration
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• Canvas Basics
• ⚙ Ally & Accessibility
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• ⚙ Assignments
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• ⚙ Turnitin Assignments
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Contact Information

Mary Stuart Rogers, MSR 380

Adding an Assignment

Canvas Assignment can be used to collect a submission from students electronically, provide instructions for and remind students about an in-class activity, and track extra credit. 

How do I create an assignment?

How do I add assignment types, pages, and files as module items?

Editing Assignment Details

After creating an assignment, modify the assignment details and settings by clicking the action menu and select Edit. Update the assignment instructions and guidelines, set the due date, and number of points to earn. 

How do I add or edit details in an assignment?

Removing or Duplicating Assignments

Clean up unused assignments by removing them from Modules, or by deleting them from the Assignments page of your course. 

How do I delete an assignment?

Establish a routine pattern of assignments and activities for students. When assigning an assignment that students will complete each week, create the assignment once, then duplicate it and move it to subsequent weeks. 

How do I duplicate an assignment?

Allowing a Resubmission

By default, resubmissions are always allowed if the instructor leaves the Attempts setting at "Unlimited". After students submit their assignment, they may revisit the assignment to submit a new version. As the instructor, you can view the various versions of the submission, deciding which version to accept and grade. Prevent students from revisiting the assignment by limiting the number of attempts in the assignment settings or set an  Until  availability date. 

Can a student resubmit an assignment?

Creating Group Assignments

To create an assignment that the students will submit as part of a group, check the box for "This is a Group Assignment" in the Group Assignment area.

Understand groups in Canvas

Configuring Peer Reviews

Use the peer review option to pair students up with a partner to review and provide feedback of their work. 

How do I create a peer review assignment?

Want to learn more?

View all Canvas Guides for Assignments

Updated: October 11, 2022

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About assignments in Canvas

Watch a video overview of Canvas assignments

Why do I have to re-create my assignments in Canvas?

If you already have assignments created in Word or Google docs, Catalyst tools, or posted online, you might wonder, “What’s the point is of recreating them in Canvas?” Not only does Canvas make it easy to create assignments with lots of options (selective release, group assignments, peer review, submission type) it also adds convenience for you and your students.

What are Assignment Groups?

Like Catalyst Gradebook, Canvas prefers for you to create assignment groups for organization. The groups you create control how the gradebook is structured and you can choose to weight final grades based on those groups. By default you begin with a group called Assignments. You can choose to keep all of your assignments in this one group, or create as many new ones as you like.

Where do I create assignments?

You can create assignments in the Assignments area of Canvas or in the Calendar. Your Assignments page will show the work you have assigned. In student view, the Assignments page will show all assigned work and the point value of each (if you set point values when setting up an assignment). Any graded activity (such as a discussion, quiz, essay or project) can be an assignment.

When you create an assignment in your Canvas course it is automatically added to the assignment list on the Syllabus page, the course calendar, and your gradebook. If you change the due date for an assignment, Canvas updates it course-wide. If you alter the assignment you can have Canvas notify your students.

What can I do with assignments?

Assignments can be used to:

• Set up online submissions that can be quickly graded in the SpeedGrader™
• Grade online submissions work submitted on paper
• Set up peer review
• Grade Discussions, either among the whole class or student groups
• Open Quizzes for a limited amount of time
• Create ungraded activities that align with course outcomes

Assignments and Grading

Having your assignments in Canvas and automatically linked to the gradebook means you can take advantage of SpeedGrader and rubrics to make the grading process faster and more efficient. Canvas communication tools allow you to provide your students with text or multimedia feedback on all assignments.

Community Support (Archived) — LucyLex asked a question.

I am taking a creative writing course.  I need to edit one of my submissions; our writing is not graded, and the (stated) reason is to encourage us to review the assignments of our peers.  It is because of those very reviews that I have edits to make; until this is resolved everyone is reviewing my old submission and I am not able to gather new feedback.

My understanding is that this capability is available in the mobile app - but who thinks it is realistic to write and edit an entire novel on a phone?!

If you could resolve this issue so that we can edit assignments that have already been submitted within the web-based platform I would very much appreciate it.  Thank you.

• Learner Support

Archisha Bhar

I am taking a creative writing course. I need to edit one of my submissions; our writing is not graded, and the (stated) reason is to encourage us to review the assignments of our peers. It is because of those very reviews that I have edits to make; until this is resolved everyone is reviewing my old submission and I am not able to gather new feedback.

If you could resolve this issue so that we can edit assignments that have already been submitted within the web-based platform I would very much appreciate it. Thank you.

Hello @LucyLex

You can follow these steps to edit your peer-graded assignment:

• Go to your Peer-Graded Assignment submission page
• Click on My submission
• Scroll down to the bottom and you’ll find Edit submission option
• Click on it and then you can follow the steps that come after that

Let me know if you could edit your assignment.

Hello @LucyLex I’m sorry to hear about your frustration with this; I looked into it and found that this is a Practice Peer-Graded assignment.

Unfortunately, Practice Peer-Graded assignments currently do not offer the option to edit and resubmit. However, these assignments won’t affect your grade.

You’re welcome to contact support and let them know that you would like for this to be changed, and it may bring more attention to this.

To do so, enter the Help Center and log in from the top right corner. Then, look for the option to contact “Contact us” at the bottom of this article .

Thanks, Archisha. There is no Edit submission link anywhere at the bottom; just a thumbs up, a thumbs down, and a flag:

I have seen other folks post questions about the same issue in the discussion groups.

Unless I am missing one of the platform’s functions, it does not seem well-suited for this type of work or learning experience (sharing edits, requesting feedback on evolving documents, etc.). What vehicle does Coursera suggest for sharing work with peers?

Thanks for your help.

Hi @LucyLex

There must be some technical problem. Try asking in the Help Center.

Thanks, Archisha.  There is no  Edit submission  link anywhere at the bottom; just a thumbs up, a thumbs down, and a flag:

I have seen other folks post questions about the same issue in the discussion groups.  

Unless I am missing one of the platform’s functions, it does not seem well-suited for this type of work or learning experience (sharing edits, requesting feedback on evolving documents, etc.).  What vehicle does Coursera suggest for sharing work with peers? 

Related Questions

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Submit Multiple Assignment Submissions in Canvas (Student)

Last modified 8/4/2023

A professor may set an assignment in Canvas to accept multiple submission attempts. Multiple submission attempts are when a student submits multiple documents for one assignment. 

How to Submit Multiple Attempts for One Assignment

• In Canvas, navigate to the assignment into which you will be uploading multiple documents.  

• Select the New Attempt button and submit the next document by following step #3. 

• Accessing Assignments in Canvas
• Accessing Modules in Canvas
• Collaborative Assignments
• Canvas Student App - Mobile and the Web Version of Student Canvas
• Logging into Canvas

How to Get Help

For technical assistance,  Submit a Help Ticket  or contact the Technology Support Center at (309) 438-4357, by email at  [email protected] , or by Live Chat at  Help.IllinoisState.edu .

For instructional assistance, you may contact the Center for Integrated Professional Development by phone (309) 438-2542, or email at   [email protected] .

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University Resources

Submitting to an assignment

Turnitin uses the same Canvas upload process you'll already familiar with. If you haven't submitted using Canvas before, follow the steps below.

• Navigate to your course.
• From the Assignments tab , open your assignment.

It is possible that your institution is using the Canvas Student Experience view. If the upload submission window does not look like the image above, it may look like this instead:

• If you haven't already, you may need to accept the Turnitin EULA and verify that your submission is your own work.

A similarity report will generate for every file uploaded.

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