State of Canvas 2025: Assignments 

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Now that we’ve hit the summer and have half a moment to breathe, we’re going to take the next few weeks to do a comprehensive review of various elements of Canvas. We’ll be taking a look at the current state of the tools, highlighting any major changes that have been made recently, and looking forward at Canvas’ roadmap and future changes.  

This week, we’ll be looking at Assignments in Canvas. Out of the posts we have planned, assignments is the most “stable” at the moment – we’ve had some changes across the last year, and there isn’t anything huge on the horizon (at the moment). So, let’s jump right into looking at some of the most notable (or potentially overlooked) parts of Assignments!  

Annotation Assignments 

When thinking about assignments, it’s easy to focus on the “standard” – students uploading some sort of file to Canvas. But Canvas does have more options than just that, including the Student Annotation Online submission type. For this kind of assignment, you provide a file when you create the assignment. Students then can use all the same tools you have in SpeedGrader to add their annotations! For full details and instructions for the student process to complete and submit the assignment, check out “How Do I Annotate a File as an Assignment Submission in Canvas.”  

“Assign To” Available in More Places 

If you wanted to update the due date for an assignment, previously you had to go to either the assignment itself or bulk edit the dates for all assignments. Now, Canvas has made it simpler to update the dates for a single assignment without having to go into the full “edit assignment details/settings” page. Now, you can quickly change the dates from the Assignments or Modules pages (in addition to the “normal” way of changing the dates). For full details, check out “Canvas Update: New Method for Adding or Changing Due Dates.”  

Student Rubric Self-Assessment / Assignment Enhancements

Canvas has added a way for students to self-assess work they submit with the assignment’s rubric. Students will use the rubric tied to the assignment, and their assessment is not tied into the actual grade in any way – though instructors can view how students assessed themselves as they are grading.

Self Assessment Rubrics is available in Canvas now, but you may not see it in your course. In order to use this feature, Assignment Enhancements – Students must be turned on in the “Feature Options” section of your course settings. Once it is enabled, you will be able to see a “Enable self assessment” checkbox when adding a rubric to an assignment. For full details about how Self Assessment Rubrics work, check out “Self Assessment Rubrics are here!” from the Canvas blog.

We’ll keep you updated on any upcoming changes to Assignments in Canvas! In the meantime, if you want to check out any of our previous posts, check out the Assignments tag.

If you have questions about how to implement any of these in your course, please don’t hesitate to email us at ctl@cedarville.edu.  

Want to never miss a post? Subscribe here!