Skip to main content

Creating a Canvas Assignment

NEW: A vision for education and skills at Newcastle University: Education for Life 2030+

Assignments in Canvas can be used to challenge students’ understanding and assess competency through the use of a variety of media.

The Assignments page in a Canvas course shows students all assignments they are expected to complete, along with the number of points each assignment is worth.

Assignments can be assigned to all students in a course or differentiated by section or individual user.

It is an option for a Canvas assignment to include a Turnitin Plagiarism review.

Some key things to know about Assignments include:

  • Graded assignments automatically add columns to the Canvas Gradebook.

  • Assignment settings can be edited to meet specific assessment requirements.

  • The On Paper or No Submission options can be used to enter grades for in-class or offline work where a physical or online submission is not required.

  • Students can submit work online directly through Canvas.

  • Due dates entered for assignments automatically populate the Syllabus, Calendar, and To-Do list on the Canvas Home Page, and trigger notifications for students.

When creating assignments, you can also:

  • Restrict acceptable file types for online submissions.

  • Easily accept multimedia assignments.

  • Include a Turnitin Plagiarism review

  • Add a rubric to clearly communicate expectations and support efficient grading.

  • Duplicate assignments easily using the selector in Module view.

  • Engage students in the assessment process by enabling peer review.

File Type Comparison for SpeedGrader

When using Canvas as your assessment submission portal, it’s important to consider the file types students are allowed to submit. To ensure you can view submissions in Canvas SpeedGrader, make sure the files are compatible with Canvas DocViewer and can be checked for similarity by Turnitin.

The table below indicates which file submission types can be viewed in Canvas DocViewer and which files can be checked for similarity by Turnitin:

File Type

File Extension

Canvas DocViewer

Turnitin

Microsoft Word (Pre-2007)

.doc

X

X

Microsoft Word (Post-2007)

.docx

X

X

Microsoft PowerPoint (Pre-2007)

.ppt

X

 

Microsoft PowerPoint (Post-2007)

.pptx

X

X

Microsoft Excel (Pre-2007)

.xlsx

X

 

Microsoft Excel (Post-2007)

.xls

X

 

Apple Mac Keynote

.key

 

  

Apple Mac Numbers

.numbers

 

 

Apple Mac Pages

.pages

 

 

Open Document Formula

.odf

X

 

Open Document Graphics

.odg

X

 

Open Document Presentations

.odp

X

 

Open Document Spreadsheets

.ods

X

 

Open Document Word Processing

.odt

X

X

Adobe PDF

.pdf

X

X

OpenOffice Calc

.sxc

X

 

OpenOffice Impress

.sxi

X

 

OpenOffice Writer

.sxw

X

 

Plain Text File

.txt

X

X

Rich Text Format

.rtf

X

X

HyperText Markup Language

.html/.htm

 

X

Hangul Word Processor

.hwp/.hwpx

 

X

File Size Considerations

Although Canvas accepts files up to 5GB, Turnitin can only process files that are under 100MB and fewer than 800 pages. Therefore, submissions requiring a similarity report must meet these size and page limits

There is also a minimum submission size for Turnitin to process the document which is 20 words.

Larger files also will take longer to load in the DocViewer, files over 30MB will need to be downloaded to view.

Image Type Considerations

The following image files are supported by Canvas DocViewer and will be rendered:

  • .bmp
  • .png
  • .tiff
  • .jpeg
  • .svg
  • .jpg
  • .tif

Other Considerations

  • HTML within text files (.txt) cannot be previewed or annotated in DocViewer and must be downloaded to view the content.
  • Audio and video embedded in PowerPoint files (.ppt/.pptx) cannot be previewed in DocViewer and require downloading.
  • If using OpenDocument files (.ods/.odt), these can not be previewed in the Canvas Teacher and Canvas Student apps.
  • Apple iWork files (.pages, .numbers, and .key) cannot be previewed in DocViewer and would need to be downloaded onto a machine that supports these formats.
  • SpeedGrader may take up to ten minutes after an assignment is submitted to display a document, so please account for this when marking immediately after a submission.
  • Image scans of text will not be processed by Turnitin unless the text is able to be highlighted/selected in the document.