Create Assignments for Your Course
How to Create Assignments
Using assignments in Canvas provides a streamlined process for assigning homework and creating quizzes for students. Canvas considers an 'assignment' to be anything that is graded, whether that be a quiz or homework assignment, and whether it's delivered entirely online, paper-and-pencil, or is a participatory assignment with no actual deliverable.
This Quick Start guide will cover the creation of assignments where the student submits a file electronically, on paper, using an external tool such as Turnitin or Panopto, or where no submission is expected (e.g. class participation). See Create Tests and Quizzes For Your Course and Create and Manage Discussions for more information about using those tools as assignments.
1. In the Course Navigation menu, click the Assignments link.
2. Click "+Assignment" at the top right.
3. Write the assignment title and directions for students.
4. Assign the number of points available for the assignment.
5. Choose an "Assignment Group". Assignment groups are, in essence, a category of assignment. For more information about using Assignment Groups, see the Canvas guides regarding Assignments.
6. There are four submission types:
- No Submission: an activity where nothing will be collected from students (e.g. a participation grade)
- Online: assignments uploaded to Canvas (essays, excel documents, etc.)
- For the full details about the online assignment subtypes, (text entry, annotation, file upload, etc), please see the official documentation Links to an external site..
- We have a recorded mini-webinar on annotation assignments, including assignment ideas, available on the Training Webinars page.
- On Paper: assignments/quizzes/activities that were written on paper and collected by the instructor
- External Tool: assignments submitted through a 3rd party tool that is integrated with Canvas, such as a textbook publisher's website or Turnitin
7. Submission Attempts: You may allow unlimited submission attempts for Online assignments, or restrict attempts to one or more. When a student submits to an assignment they have already submitted to, the previous submission is retained as well, and the instructor may view both.
8. Group Assignments and Peer Reviews: Assignments can be created as either a group assignment or peer review assignment.
9. Assign options- You can assign an assignment to your entire class, a specific student, and/or a section of your class. You can also set the due date and the availability dates (when your students can submit their assignment). Each section can have different due dates and availability dates.
10. If you are finished creating the assignment, click on "Save & Publish". If you are not finished creating the assignment, click on "Save" and you may come back and work on it more later without students having access to it.