Transcription
In this video, I'm going to show you all the ways you can create assignments in [Music] Canvas. Hey guys, it's Lauren, welcome back to my channel. I am so excited to share in this video how to create assignments in Canvas. I'm going to be continuing on with the "Everything You Need to Know About Canvas" series. This video is part four, so if you haven't checked out the first three videos, I highly suggest you do if you're new to Canvas.
So, we're going to continue with the teacher template module that I've created in my sandbox course and start creating assignment templates for different submission types. Let's get started with creating Canvas assignments. We are now continuing on and we are actually going to get started with creating assignments. But before we do that, I just want to show you how you can actually create these little text headers for kind of dividing up your content in a module. So again, I'm just going to go to the plus button and we're going to choose text header. And from there, I'm going to use emoji. So I have this three dashes that are, they're just a little bit thicker than the traditional one. And then in the caps, I'm going to do quizzes. And then we will do the emojis again. And then there you go. That is going to be my header. And I'm doing it as all caps because I, I think it's just going to stand out a little bit more in comparison to the rest of the content. You can get really creative with these headers. I've seen people, they will use more colorful emojis, so maybe, you know, they're going to use all the different color parts instead. That is completely up to you.
And one thing I will say about using emojis, this is a quick tip. You should avoid using emojis when it comes to your content pages and headers. That's totally fine to add emojis when it comes to assignments, discussions, quizzes, anything that can be graded. Let's say your school district is syncing to an outside portal, a grading portal, do not use emojis because it will mess up that syncing system. A lot of those portals don't recognize what emojis are and therefore they don't sync properly together. Use your emojis all you want in the headers and the pages. Leave them out when it comes to grading assignments, quizzes, discussions, all of those things that have a rubric or a score.
Now let's get into creating assignments. So we have this assignment template here that I am going to click on and it's completely blank. So what we're going to do is we actually going to click the edit button. And from here, we have our Rich Content Editor again. And what I'm going to do actually is right-click, open my home page, which is just my modules page. I'm going to go to my blank template here. I am going to copy again, again, this styling. Go back to my assignment and click paste. And now with all the styling, I'm going to start building my assignment. Okay, so this is an example of an assignment template that I have for one of my TPT template courses. So here is just kind of the basic instructions that I'm going to add to my assignment. And so I'm just going to copy and paste them into my assignment here. Let's hit enter, paste. I'm going to change this font to match. So back to Balsamic Sans. And then we're going to add in the styling here. So I just, I'm going to delete this real quick. Assignment instructions. We'll highlight that. We'll do green this time. And then the title, maybe we'll do Activity One. Insert assignment name. So let's just go through real quick the assignment instructions. So it says, "You will now complete the assignment by reading the instructions and completing the document attached below." Digital worksheet, student annotation assignment, text entry box, media recording, etc. This is kind of referring to the submission type of online text entry, website URL, media recording, student annotation assignment, file upload. So there are multiple submission types. The two that you'll probably do the most are the online and the external tool because these are both digital. You can do one on paper, that's an option, that's kind of cool. Um, and then of course, there's one that's no submission. But the two again that we're going to focus on are online, which again, you have these entry options, and then the external tool where that is where you get like all of the different apps. So which you can add later, like Nearpod and Google LTI assignment, that's where you would access that. But for right now, we're going to focus on the online ones because those are the easiest. So that is what this red section is referring to is the submission type. Then it says, "To complete the assignment, read all the instructions, access and open your assignment, complete the document assignment type, whatever it is, and then submit your assignment for a grade by clicking the blue submit button."
All right, so then here is where we get into the assignment options, right? So we already kind of went over submission type, but we can add a point value. I like to leave this blank until I duplicate the assignment template and then I start adding in that stuff. So I'm just going to leave that at zero. Then for assignment groups, you can actually create them right here. You can do summative. You can do, let's add another group, formative. So maybe it's a formative assignment. Something you can do to add and label them. Then display as grades. So you can do point value, percentages, complete/incomplete, letter grade, GPA scale, or not graded. I would leave it at points. The reason why, again, related to if you're using an external sync or portal for grading, you want to make sure that they sync properly. If you're having to input your grades, then you can just, uh, ignore what I just said. You can also, you can click "Don't count this assignment towards the final grade," which is great because then in your grade book, students see a score, but it isn't applying to that final grade. So that's another option.
We are going to go over now every single assignment type. I'm going to create each one of these assignments in Canvas and show you what it looks like within the template. So let's start with text entry. We're going to do limited attempts just for now. This is actually a new feature, a "Manage Assignment" tool. So if you're in a sandbox course like me, this doesn't really matter to you right now. But what's cool about this is you can get super specific now to assign these assignments to maybe one student, maybe a section. So if my course is later cross-listed, what's great about this is I can do like period one, period two, if they're all cross-listed together, together. I love this new feature for "Manage Assignment." It is just amazing that we have this now to assign students.
Okay, so actually, before I click save, what I'm going to do, since I now know this is a text entry, I am going to change the directions here to be "text entry box assignment." So I'm actually going to highlight this, "complete the text entry." Usually too, when it comes to a text entry assignment, we have to get a little more specific. So from right here, I'm going to add another line. And let's just do, "Answer the following questions." So now maybe this is just some questions here for students to answer. Okay, so I have altered this. I'm going to click save so we can get a better look at this. Okay, so we have "Activity One: Insert Assignment Name" here. Here's the basic instructions. And then, "Answer the following questions. Make sure to answer in a complete sentence for full credit."
Now we're going to look at this from a student's perspective. So in order to do that, a big reminder, you need to publish everything. So I'm going to publish the module and all of the items. And then from there, we can now go to this assignment template. And so here's what a text entry assignment looks like. We're going to click "Start." And then we have this box here. So it's great, I wrote questions, but that's okay. Students now have this box. They can now answer their questions here, like so, by reading, you know, "Answer the following questions." So it's really good to always have like whatever they're responding to at the very bottom. So instructions up top, and then like the information they need to respond to below. Now they have their answers and they can click "Submit." So that is the first type of assignment that you can create. Super simple. Now we're going to move on to the next type.
Okay, so I'm going to create another assignment template. But what I'm going to do here is assignment template. And we're going to type this "text entry box" as the first one. Now we're going to create a new assignment template. So we'll do assignment template. And this one is going to be "student annotation." Okay, so this one, and we'll publish it for now just so that we can view it when we're done. This assignment is the easiest assignment that you can create if you are reusing your prior content. All right, so all we're going to do is I'm actually just going to copy and paste in the code from the previous assignment. Can change up background colors again if we like. There we go. Assignment instruction. It is not a text box entry anymore. So we are going to write "student annotation." There we go. Assignment: "Complete the student annotation assignment. Submit your assignment for grade." That's all good.
Okay, so now I actually, I can get rid of this portion because all of my, all of my instructions or lesson content is going to be within the student annotation assignment, which is any document that you've created prior to Canvas. So let's find this. So we're going to do a submission type online and we're going to go down to student annotation assignment. Okay, so now we have to upload a file. So it could be in your files already. Mine is not. All right, so I found the worksheet within my files and I'm going to click open. And now this is attached to the assignment. So again, this is amazing if you are reusing content, you're just getting started with Canvas and you have so many worksheets that you want to repurpose. This is a great, great option. The easiest assignment that you can create. So now what we're going to do is we're going to scroll down and we're going to click save. And now I have my student annotation assignment here. And this can be repurposed, reused. But I'm going to show you what it looks like. So we're going to view this as a student. And so you'll see it'll pop up with this window where I can actually edit this as a student. So I can make this bigger. And I have all of these tools. So I can select each one and they do different things. So here is a point annotation. So this is really great for like annotating some text. So maybe we come down here, I'll just go to like this little section of "favorite states of matter." And then maybe right here, right, "Okay, I just wrote my favorite state of matter is liquid," just for this example. I have a highlighting tool, which is fun. Get rid of that, delete. Okay. And then we have awesome text. So I can just click anywhere on this page. So I choose right here and I'm going to write my name. And I can select this and change the color of this to green and increase the size of it like so. Grab my little pointer here. And now I am going to click and drag it to the center. And you'll notice that it kind of cuts off the science part. So I'm just going to go from white background to clear. So that way I can even get more accurate, get closer to the line. Like so. And there you have my name right there. Then you also have strikethrough annotations. So you can again, very similar to the highlighter tool. So you can just cross out any text within a PDF document. Then the last two are kind of drawing tools. So we can select whatever color. I'm going to do black to draw a picture of myself. All right, so I gave myself some eyes and a smile. And then there's also the box tool. So this would outline big sections of text or really get creative with this where maybe students have to box off certain sections of different color and then write certain comments about it. It's completely up to you on how you want to do this. But the last thing I will show you in terms of the text, because that's the tool that's used the most, we'll make this a smaller size right here. I'm going to just type a bunch of gibberish. And I've reached the end. I need to create a new line. I can't just hit enter. So you make a new line, you actually have to hit shift enter. And then you have a new line. So I just wanted to show you. It's really good to actually turn on the white background for that section. I'm just, so it's a little bit easier for you to see. Those are basically all of the student annotation tools. And so once students are done with this, they can hit escape. And then their annotations are saved. Note that as long as students don't click the submit button, these annotations will stay there. They'll be saved. Um, so we'll just click submit now that we're done. And we get the confetti. And there you go. There's our second assignment type.
All right, so now what we're going to do is we are going to add another assignment. We are going to do assignment template. And this time what we're going to do is "file upload assignment." Add this. And then of course, click and drag it up here. We'll publish it. And then we'll click on this edit. We're going to copy and paste. Now we're going to do from "student annotation assignment" to "file upload assignment." This changes from student annotation to, we can rewrite "file upload" here. So this is going to kind of involve some sort of Canvas assignment. Insert a line. And then right here, "Access your assignment here's a placeholder for the link of choice." Okay, so again, from no submission, we're going back to online. And we'll do a file upload. Now you can restrict the file upload types. So maybe it's going to be like a PDF document or just a doc. It is completely up to you. I personally don't like to do that just because then it, it can just get complicated for your students. So I like to leave that unchecked most of the time. Let's save this.
All right, so here is what this assignment currently looks like. And we're actually just going to add one more thing. So normally in a template, I would just leave this blank. But let's see what it looks like for students, right? So you have a good idea of how you can create an assignment. All right, so let's say you are a Google user. You can make force copies of worksheets. So this is an old worksheet that I have. And I'm actually going to change this from edit to copy. Even when you add copy, you need to make sure that it is shared with the appropriate people. So it's restricted right now. But clicking it either with your institution or anyone with the link is appropriate. And you should definitely do that so your students can see the document. So let's go back to edit mode. So now what I'm going to do here is we're going to type in the name of the, um, worksheet. So I'm just going to type it "Reading Guide." And then I can just select all of that. And then from there, we're going to add the link. External link. We're going to paste. Make sure copies at the end, which it is. Click done. And now I can click save. Now my students can click on that link, make a copy, complete the worksheet. This actually might require a little more information. So what we can do is, "Complete the file upload assignment. Make a copy of the document linked below. Fill in the document with all your answers. Save the document as a PDF. Upload to this assignment." So you might have more specific instructions here. I just wanted to quickly add these in so that it's more specific for this template. So now I'll click save. And then we will go back here. File download. And we're going to download this as a PDF document. Then from here, when we're in the student view, we can click "Start assignment," "Upload file," "Choose file," and then "Submit assignment." And there you go. That is what a file upload assignment looks like. And there's your confetti. I'll move myself because the thing too is whenever students want to see, they can actually click on the submission details. And it's right there as well for them to view. And then they can also resubmit the assignment right here if needed.
We are going to create one more assignment type. So I'm going to click this button. I'm going to do "media recording." Okay, so with this one, we're going to click on it, publish it so that we can view it as a student later. And then from here, we're just going to add our instructions again from before. So I'm actually just going to my HTML editor. I'm copying this code here. And then I am going to paste in the code. And then I'm going to start editing this. We're going to change this to "Media Recording Assignment." "Complete the media recording assignment." Change these. This time we're going to get rid of that real quick. Instead of "access your document," what we're actually going to do is go back to "text entry box" because we're just going to answer the following questions. But this time instead of answering them in text form, "Make sure to answer all of the following questions in your video recording." There we go. So now they're going to answer these questions. Okay. And we are going to select. So again, we're going back to the submission type, no submission. We're going to do online. Scroll down, media recording. And then we are going to click save. In student view, so we have the template here in student view. We'll start the assignment. And then there is this record button. So we can click here. And now you'll see I can just click "Start recording." So we'll do that. Oh, and then I, I messed up. So I'm doing starting over. "Start recording." Question one, question two, question three. All right, I finished. I can play this. Question one, question two, question three. And then I can give it a name. "Answers to the questions." Click "Save media." I can start over. I can even, if I didn't like this version, I can upload my own media file. So that's another option if, like, I recorded it on my cell phone or something. Then we can click save. And then it is right there. And then I click "Submit assignment."
All right, so that was the assignment. The last assignment that I am going to add into this module here. So just a few things to add. You'll notice that these are light green. What this means is that there are student submissions. So you cannot unpublish this now because we did it on a student test. What I can actually do when we click student view, I can reset the student. And what that does is that gets rid of all of these submissions. So when I leave student view, it still has that light green color. It might take a little bit for it to appear. Oh, there we go. The dark green now. So now what I can do is I can unpublish all of the module. And what I do suggest is when you're creating assignments, you do go into student view and submit. Just so that way you have a good understanding of what the student interface is like. And so if there's any issues along the way, you can fix them before your students have access. But of course, everything is going to be trial and error when you're getting started with a new tool.
All right, so again, the greatest part of this teacher template is now when I have an assignment template, I can just, just click here and click duplicate. And then click it and drag it to the appropriate module. The other option, of course, if you have too many modules and you're like, I can't click and drag it all the way to the bottom. Well, you can make a copy. And then you can move it to. And then this is where you can move it to a specific module that's maybe all the way at the bottom. So maybe I have six modules. I can actually select module six and place it at the top or before or after a certain item or at the bottom of the module. That just is a shortcut for you too as you're starting to make duplicates and copies of each template and creating your assignment. Ultimately, I did only show you these four assignment template types because they are the easiest ones to get started with. Use your teacher template to create assignments of every single type of assignment you can think of that is useful to you. And I promise you, it will make your life a lot easier.
All right guys, this is a little bit of a longer one, but I'm so excited for the next one where we're going to go over discussions, which I think are very underrated. Um, and not used to their full capacity, especially in the K12 space. And so I'm really excited to show you more about that. Thank you guys so much for watching. I really hope that you enjoyed this video and that you found it helpful. If you did find it helpful, I would greatly appreciate you let me know by leaving a like. And of course, if you'd subscribe to this channel, I'd greatly appreciate it as I'm continuing this series and I'd love for you to stick around. If you have any questions about this video or honestly anything else Canvas related, feel free to drop them in the comments below. And I promise to be quick in answering and responding to your questions. All right guys, I'm excited to see you in the next one where we go over discussion boards. So stay tuned for that. Otherwise, I'll see you in the next one. Bye. Oh.