how to create assignments on canvas

Getting Started with Canvas Assignments

• Last modification date Updated On July 26, 2024
• Categories: Assignments , Canvas , Uncategorized
• Categories: assessment , Getting Started , Grading

Canvas  Assignments  are a way for instructors to provide students opportunities to practice using the knowledge and skills they have gained or to assess student performance related to such knowledge and skills. (Creating an Assignment is the  only  way to create a new column in the Gradebook.)

In Canvas there are four basic  Submission Types  for assignments. The submission types include:

• No Submission : For assignments for which you are not collecting any content from the students.
• Text Entry : For students to enter text directly into a text box on Canvas.
• Website URL : For students to enter a URL (usually to a blog, video, podcast, etc.).
• Media Recordings : For students to upload or record media for submission.
• File Uploads : For students to upload files for submission ( Restrict Upload File Types  will allow you to limit which types of files may be submitted).
• On Paper : For assignments students will submit in person.
• External Tool : For assignments which students will submit through a third-party tool (such as Turnitin, Panopto Video Quiz, and PlayPosit).

Managing an Assignment

Managing assignment groups.

When getting started with Assignments, learn to

• Create an assignment shell with the Canvas guide  How do I create an assignment? 

If you select  Peer Reviews Appear Anonymously , annotation tools in  SpeedGrader  will become unavailable.

If you change the  Assign To  area from  Everyone  to select students after submissions have already begun, and do not have a second set of Assign To dates, submissions from unassigned students will disappear.

• Published assignments are visible as existing outside of availability dates, but students cannot see the details.
• If looking to update the due and/or availability dates on multiple assignments, see   How do I bulk update due dates and availability dates as an instructor?
• If choosing the option to make an assignment a  Group Assignment : If only assigning to specific groups, make sure to click the  X  on the  Everyone Else  choice under  Assign to .

Media Recording  Assignments are not recommended due to technical reasons. Instead, have students submit media by embedding it in a  Text Entry  assignment through Panopto .

Clearly express expectations and criteria for grading by using a  Rubric .

Be cautious limiting submission attempts, as students often make mistakes loading documents and need multiple attempts to ensure you have the correct submission.

• Delete an assignment with the Canvas guide  How do I delete an assignment?
• This duplication process will not work for Quizzes.
• Attach a rubric to an assignment for grading or to communicate expectations to students with the Canvas guide  How do I add a rubric to an assignment?

Accessibility Tips

• Use descriptive text for links, instead of long URLs or ‘click here’. 
• Make instructions brief and to-the-point. Avoid long paragraphs and sentences.
• Consider allowing multiple submission types to accommodate technical limitations students may face.

Assignment Groups  are a way to categorize different graded items in Canvas. For example, you may have journals, blogs, and essays which your students create in your course. Assignment Groups allow you to label and group different types of assignments separately in order to better organize and for ease when applying weighting (see  How do I weight the final course grade based on assignment groups? ). When getting started with Assignment Groups, learn to

• Add and delete assignment groups with the Canvas guide  How do I add an assignment group in a course?
• Move or reorder an assignment group with the Canvas guide  How do I move or reorder an assignment group?
• Make rules governing grading expectations within assignment groups with the Canvas guide  How do I create rules for an assignment group?

Additional Resources

• CTI Resource: What is the Assignments Index Page?
• How do I bulk update due dates and availability dates as an instructor?
• How do I weight the final course grade based on assignment groups?
• Canvas Student Guide

Subscribe By Email

Get a weekly email of all new posts.

Your Email Leave this field blank

This form is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

University Center for Teaching and Learning

How to create assignments for your canvas course.

• Quick Start
• Instructor Help
• Student Help

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 How to Create Tests and Quizzes for Your Canvas 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)
• For the full details about the online assignment subtypes, (text entry, annotation, file upload, etc.), please see the official documentation .
• 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.

Instructor Help for Assignments

Creating assignments.

• How do I create an assignment?
• How do I add a moderated assignment to be graded by multiple reviewers?
• How do I create an online assignment?
• How do I add or edit details in an assignment?
• How do I add or edit points for an assignment?
• What assignment types can I create in a course?
• How do I limit submission attempts for an assignment?
• How do I add an assignment that includes anonymous grading?
• How do I enable anonymous instructor annotations in student submissions?
• How do I import SCORM files as an assignment?
• How do I publish or unpublish an assignment as an instructor?

Managing Assignments

• How do I use the Assignments Index Page?
• Can a student resubmit Canvas assignments?
• How do I assign an assignment to everyone in a course?
• How do I assign an assignment to a course group?
• How do I assign an assignment to a course section?
• How do I assign an assignment to an individual student?
• How do I view differentiated assignments with different due dates in a course?
• How do I bulk update due dates and availability dates as an instructor?
• How do I delete an assignment?
• How do I duplicate an assignment?
• How do I move or reorder an assignment?
• How do I use Direct Share to copy an assignment to another course?
• How do I use Direct Share to send an assignment to another instructor?

Creating and Managing Peer Review Assignments

• How do I create a peer review assignment?
• How do I use peer review assignments in a course?
• How do I automatically assign peer reviews for an assignment?
• How do I manually assign peer reviews for an assignment?
• How do I view student peer review comments as an instructor?

Creating External Tool Assignments

• How do I add an assignment using an external app?
• How do I create a cloud assignment with a Microsoft Office 365 file?

Using Assignment Groups

• How do I add an assignment group in a course?
• How do I create an assignment shell in an assignment group?
• How do I create rules for an assignment group?
• How do I move or reorder an assignment group?
• How do I weight the final course grade based on assignment groups?

Grading Considerations

• How do I add a grading scheme to an assignment?
• How do I download all student submissions for an assignment?
• How do I upload all student submissions for an assignment?
• How do I exclude an assignment from the course’s final grades?
• How do I give extra credit in a course?

Student Help for Assignments

• How do I view Assignments as a student?
• How do I filter assignments by type as a student?
• How do I submit an online assignment?
• How do I submit a text entry assignment?
• How do I enter a URL as an assignment submission?
• How do I submit a media file as an assignment submission?
• How do I upload a file as an assignment submission in Canvas?
• How do I upload a file from Microsoft Office 365 as an assignment submission?
• How do I know when my assignment has been submitted?
• How do I manage celebration animations in Canvas as a student?
• How do I submit a cloud assignment with Microsoft Office 365?
• How do I download assignment submissions from all my courses?
• How do I annotate a file as an assignment submission in Canvas?
• How do I use DocViewer in Canvas assignments as a student?
• How do I submit a PDF assignment with annotations in the Student app on my Android device?
• How do I add annotations to a submission in the Student app on my iOS device?

Groups and Peer

• How do I submit an assignment on behalf of a group?
• How do I know if I have a peer review assignment to complete?
• How do I submit a peer review to an assignment?
• Where can I find my peers’ feedback for peer reviewed assignments?
• How do I view the rubric for my assignment?
• How do I view the rubric for my external tool assignment?
• How do I view rubric results for my assignment?
• How do I know when my instructor has graded my assignment?
• How do I view assignment comments from my instructor?
• How do I view annotation feedback comments from my instructor directly in my assignment submission?
• How do I view my Roll Call Attendance report as a student?
• Important dates for the summer term  
• Generative AI Resources for Faculty
• Student Communication & Engagement Resource Hub
• Summer Term Finals Assessment Strategies
• Importing your summer term grades to PeopleSoft
• Enter your summer term grades in Canvas
• Alternative Final Assessment Ideas
• Not sure what you need?
• Accessibility Resource Hub
• Assessment Resource Hub
• Canvas and Ed Tech Support
• Center for Mentoring
• Creating and Using Video
• Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
• General Pedagogy Resource Hub
• Graduate Student/TA Resources
• Remote Learning Resource Hub
• Syllabus Checklist
• Student Communication and Engagement
• Technology and Equipment
• Classroom & Event Services
• Assessment of Teaching
• Classroom Technology
• Custom Workshops
• Open Lab Makerspace
• Pedagogy, Practice, & Assessment
• Need something else? Contact Us
• Educational Software Consulting
• Learning Communities
• Makerspaces and Emerging Technology
• Mentoring Support
• Online Programs
• Teaching Surveys
• Testing Services
• Classroom Recordings and Lecture Capture
• Creating DIY Introduction Videos
• Media Creation Lab
• Studio & On-Location Recordings
• Video Resources for Teaching
• Assessment and Teaching Conference
• Diversity Institute
• New Faculty Orientation
• New TA Orientation
• Teaching Center Newsletter
• Meet Our Team
• About the Executive Director
• Award Nomination Form
• Award Recipients
• About the Teaching Center
• Annual Report
• Join Our Team

Search Utah State University:

Create an assignment in canvas.

In Canvas, any activity with an associated point value is considered an Assignment and will appear on the Assignments page, as well as in the gradebook. Assignment formats include quizzes, discussions, online document submission, and no submission, and external tool assignments. You can give an assignment to everyone in the course or target it to a specific section or user.

Types of Graded Activities in Canvas

The following table lists the types of graded activities in Canvas and their strengths and weaknesses.

To Create an Assignment

On the Course Navigation menu, click Assignments

On the Assignments list page, click Add Assignment

On the Assignment edit page, create the assignment by adding a name, instructions, and specifying the assignment options

(See the Assignment Options table for details)

Assignment Options

The following table describes the options for creating assignments.

Canvas - Get Started

The following list of pages will guide you through getting started with this tool. The current page is listed in bold.

• Log into Canvas
• Notification Preferences
• Access your Course
• Create an Assignment
• Create a Quiz in Canvas
• Add a Syllabus to Canvas
• Early Course Access for Students
• Publish Your Course
• Communication
• Five Keys to Grading
• Prepare Final Grading

March 19: New Look for Duo Two-Step Authentication Prompt. More Info.  

New to OIT Service Center? Register for an account

Create & customize canvas assignments - knowledgebase / teaching learning and research / canvas / assessments and grading / assignments - oit service center.

• Download PDF

Copy to Clipboard

Create & customize canvas assignments.

• cb christine brown
• ej edwin jeng
• mv maggie vecchione
• MK Melissa Kane
• rt rebecca taub
• Last updated: Jul 3, 2023 by Claire Streckenbach

Canvas allows you to create assignments for your students and customize the settings to meet your grading approach for your course.  Within the grading settings of a Canvas Assignment,  you can select the grading settings for each assignment based on the assignment’s type, objectives, and expectations.  You may also choose to use points, percentages, or complete/incomplete to track progress and provide feedback to students about their work. 

Create Canvas Assignments

To create an assignment:

• Log in to Canvas at canvas.brown.edu  and select your course from the Global Navigation menu on the left.

• Enter the name of the assignment in the Assignment Name  box.
• Enter a description of the assignment in the box below if relevant.

Your new assignment will appear on the Assignments page under the assignment group you selected.  Any Assignments you create automatically show up in the Calendar, Syllabus page and Gradebook.  

For more information on how to create and manage assignments, please see the following links:

• How do I add a rubric to an assignment
• How do I manage rubrics in a course
• How do I set notifications

106 of 216 people found this page helpful

Send us a note about this article

Related Content

• Enable TurnItIn for Student Assignment Submissions
• Enter Grades into Canvas Grades
• Set Varied Due Dates by Section for Canvas Assignments, Discussions, and Quizzes
• Create Weighted Assignment Groups in Canvas for Grading
• Canvas Speedgrader
• Annotate Student Submissions using Speedgrader
• Create Weighted Assignment Groups for Grading
• Canvas Quizzes

Contact the OIT Service Center

Phone: 401-863-4357

Email: [email protected]

Location: Page Robinson Hall - 69 Brown St., Room 510

See our availability

https://it.brown.edu/get-help

Walk-ins Welcome! Appointments recommended.

For reserved service for a technical consult or a loaner check-out, you can schedule an appointment here .

Reporting an IT Outage?

Report an Outage

 Service Status & Alerts     Phishing Warnings

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.

• Help Center
• Assignments
• Privacy Policy
• Terms of Service
• Submit feedback
• Instructors: Create, edit and delete courses and assignments

Create an assignment

Use Assignments to create, collect, and give feedback on assignments in a learning management system (LMS).

Before you begin

To use Assignments, you need an LMS and a Google Workspace for Education account. The account usually looks like [email protected] . If Assignments isn't installed in your LMS, ask your administrator to go to Get started with Assignments .

Create an assignment in Canvas

• Sign in to Canvas.
• Open the course.

• Enter a name and description for your assignment.
• When you set the points to zero, assignments are left ungraded in Google Assignments.
• Points that use a decimal value will be rounded down in Google Assignments.
• Due dates are imported automatically into Google Assignments if the Canvas assignment has a single due date for all students. Otherwise, the due date is left unset in Google Assignments.

• To save your assignment, click Save or Save & Publish .

• To confirm your changes and return to the rest of your assignment, click Edit .
• Tip : Your Canvas admin might have given Assignments a different name.
• If you’re signed in to your Google Workspace for Education account—Click Continue .
• If you’re not signed in—Sign in with your Google Workspace account.
• If this is your first time using Assignments in this course, you must link your LMS account to your Google Account. For instructions, go to  Link your account to Assignments (below).

• Files students submit are shared with the instructor.
• Tip: Files students submit automatically upload to SpeedGrader™.
• Click  Create .

Tip : Students can't see an assignment until you publish it.

Copy an assignment to another course in Canvas

• In the sidebar, click Assignments .

• Click Copy .

Use SpeedGrader with Google Drive files

If you create an assignment in Canvas, you can use SpeedGrader to grade students’ Drive files. However, you won’t be able to use the features included in Assignments. For details, go to Use SpeedGrader with Google Drive files in Canvas .

Create an assignment in Schoology

• Sign in to Schoology.
• In the sidebar, click Materials .
• Click Add Materials and select Google Assignments .
• If this is your first time using Assignments in this course, you must link your LMS account to your Google Account. For instructions, go to Link your account to Assignments (below).
• Enter a title for the assignment.
• (Optional) To edit the total points or add a due date or any other instructions, enter the details.
• Click Create .
• Open the assignment.

Create an assignment in another LMS

Setting up an assignment varies for each LMS. Contact your IT administrator. Or, for more information, go to the Assignments Help Community .

Link your account to Assignments

The first time you use Assignments in a course, you need to link your Google Workspace for Education account. When you do, Assignments creates a folder in Google Drive for student assignments and automatically sends grades to the LMS. Students can't submit classwork until you link your account. After you select Google Assignments as an external tool, choose an option based on whether you're:

Google, Google Workspace, and related marks and logos are trademarks of Google LLC. All other company and product names are trademarks of the companies with which they are associated.

Need more help?

Try these next steps:.

Canvas @ Yale

• Canvas Assignment Tool: Overview

Updated on Mar 22, 2022

The Canvas Assignments tool is one of several native Canvas tools that allows instructors to collect student work for grading. Through the Canvas Assignment tool, students can submit their completed work and instructors can easily collect and score the work either offline (by downloading all submissions with a single button click) or online through the Canvas SpeedGrader function. Canvas Assignments can also be used to create columns in the gradebook for grading student work that is not submitted online.

Several of the External Applications integrated into Canvas work in coordination with the Canvas Assignments tool. For these tools, you will still create the Canvas Assignment as normal, but you will need to follow the detailed instructions for the specific external application to properly link it to the Canvas Assignment. Visit our Instructional Tools support page and click on the appropriate tool for details.  

Table of Contents

This article will address the following information:

Why use Canvas Assignments?

Use cases for assignments, how do i use canvas assignments in my course, what will my students see, additional resources, for students.

Canvas Assignments are a great centralized location to find and submit their coursework.  It can provide students with detailed instructions for each assignment, due dates, template files for students to use when applicable, and rubrics to help students understand what is expected to achieve full credit for their work. Canvas' online grading via the SpeedGrader tool is a core feature of the Canvas Assignment tool, which allows students to quickly receive and reply to instructor comments on their work. Canvas Assignments also work hand-in-hand with the Canvas Grades area, so students can quickly see how well they did on each assignment and how they are doing overall in the course in one place.

For Instructors

Canvas Assignments streamlines the way that student work is collected. Instead of receiving digitally completed homework in the form of individual emails from each student for each assignment, instructors can create a Canvas Assignment to collect the work of all students. With Canvas' online grading tools, instructors can use rubrics for consistent grading and can use the Canvas SpeedGrader tool to provide detailed annotations on student-submitted files or simply use the one button download all submissions button to export all student files at once to their local computer. The Canvas Assignments tool also allows instructors the flexibility to assign activities to specific due dates for individual students or even create activities that are only available to certain students.

Canvas Assignments can be used in many ways—below are just a few examples of how assignments can be used in your course:

• Homework Assignments
• Research Papers
• Written Exams
• Handwritten Student Work (check out our help article for students on  how to create a PDF of handwritten work )
• Overall grade for course (that differs from the Canvas-calculated Totals column)
• Grade for an oral exam or other activity that does not require students to hand in work
• Class participation grade
• Peer Review Assignments – students can be assigned to read and comment on one or more of their classmates' submissions
• Group Assignments – require one submission for a group of students

Instructor and TA level users can always access the tool to create and organize activities, but the tool can be hidden from students if desired. To learn more about how to use Canvas Assignments to facilitate your online course work, please reference:

• Creating an Assignment
• Grading Assignments Using the SpeedGrader
• Due Dates versus Display Dates
• How do I automatically assign peer reviews for an assignment?
• How do I view student peer review comments as an instructor?
• How do I assign an assignment to a course group?
• Turnitin Assignment Settings Options
• Viewing a Turnitin Report (Instructor)

The actual view your students see will depend on the settings you set on your assignments. Below you can see what a student would see for an online, file upload submission type assignment.  

On each assignment, instructors can set an " Available From " date, which is the date when the assignment will open for students to start submitting their work. Even though an assignment may not yet be open, students will be able to see that there is an assignment and will be able to click on it.  

When a student views an assignment that has not opened for submissions yet, they will see a message showing that the assignment is locked and the date when the assignment will open, which is the " Available From " date.

When going to submit a file, the students will see the assignment instructions, points, due / available from / until dates, and the rubric (if one exists). The students will submit by clicking the " Submit Assignment " button and following the process to upload and submit their file(s).

Creating Assignments

• Duplicating an Assignment
• How do I exclude an assignment from the course's final grades?
• How do I bulk update due dates and availability dates as an instructor?
• How do I add a rubric to an assignment?
• Rubrics (Vendor Guides)

Assignment Groups (For organizing assessments and weighting grades)

• How do I add an assignment group in a course?
• How do I move or reorder an assignment group?
• How do I move or reorder an assignment?
• Creating Weighted Assignments Groups

Grade Posting Policies

• How do I select a grade posting policy for a course in the Gradebook?
• How do I select a grade posting policy for an assignment in the Gradebook?
• Using the Grade Posting Policy

Student Resources

• How to create a PDF of hand written assignments
• How do I submit an online assignment?
• How do I upload a file as an assignment submission in Canvas?
• How do I submit a text entry assignment?
• How do I enter a URL as an assignment submission?
• How do I submit a media file as an assignment submission?

For more help, please contact  [email protected] .

Discover Instructional Tools

• Assessment Finder Tool
• Canvas @ Yale External Applications: Overview
• Feedback & Accessibility Barriers Tool: Overview
• Panorama: Overview
• FeedbackFruits: Overview
• Canvas Quizzes: Overview
• Gradescope: Overview
• Respondus LockDown Browser: Overview
• Turnitin: Overview
• LabArchives: Overview
• WordPress: Overview
• Canvas Collaborations: Overview
• Canvas Groups: Overview
• Canvas Announcements: Overview
• Canvas Inbox: Overview
• Canvas Modules: Overview
• Canvas Pages: Overview
• Canvas Syllabus: Overview
• Photo Roster: Overview
• Canvas Discussions: Overview
• VoiceThread: Overview
• Ed Discussion: Overview
• Perusall: Overview
• Mid-Semester Feedback: Overview
• Post'Em: Overview
• Qualtrics LTI: Overview
• Poll Everywhere: Overview
• Media Library (Panopto): Overview
• LinkedIn Learning: Overview
• Zoom: Overview

Other Resources

• Accessibility
• Inclusivity
• Canvas @ Yale Settings
• Enrollment & Permissions
• Technical Support Guides
• Updates & Known Issues
• Canvas @ Yale Admin / Registrar
• Instructor Getting Started Guides
• Course Management
• Assessments, Feedback and Grades
• Canvas @ Yale External Applications
• Instructor FAQ
• Student Getting Started Guides
• Student Assessment Guides
• Student FAQ

Adobe updates free AI education tool for K-12 classrooms

As the next generation becomes increasingly exposed to  artificial Intelligence  (AI) technologies in their everyday lives, students and educators have been turning to AI tools to strengthen learning in the classroom. Despite initial rejection from educational institutions about using the technology in some capacity, most educators are now in favor  -- and Adobe is taking note.

Last week, the company  revealed new features  in Adobe Express for Education, a platform designed to be a responsible and classroom-safe AI tool that encourages students to take charge of their learning experience. 

Also:  Meet Gemini Education: Three ways Google is equipping students and educators with AI

Built by and for educators, Adobe Express for Education leverages Adobe Express technology to let students engage in creative projects and assignments while being "collaborative, easy, and improv[ing] student engagement and communication." This includes a first-of-its-kind Assignments feature that connects teachers and students in real-time, enhanced multimedia presentations and animation capabilities, and thousands of readily available subject-specific templates. 

"For today's K-12 educators, it's critical that we integrate AI into our classroom curriculum, but simply having access to AI tools isn't enough," said Christine Morgan, a teacher at Cypress-Fairbanks ISD at Hairgrove Elementary. Adobe hopes its emphasis on  generative AI  (gen AI) features will help bolster creative potential and equalize the playing field in the classroom so all students can "unleash" their artistic talents and critical thinking skills. 

Also:  Apple now offers AI training for thousands of students and alumni

One of Adobe Express for Education's most defining features is its accessibility -- the platform is free to use for all K-12 teachers and students. Adobe Express for Education can also be integrated with existing education software, including Canvas, Google Classroom, Schoology, and more. 

Some new updates include a Generate Template feature enabling students to create their own templates for art-oriented projects and activities, and a Generate Image and Generative Fill feature that easily turns ideas from a student's head into an image. 

Similarly, the Adobe Firefly AI feature in MagicSchool gives students and teachers "seamless access to Adobe Firefly image generation to make their MagicSchool lesson plans, essays, and school projects more visual and expressive," the release states. Coming soon to the platform is a Generate Coloring Page feature, which relies on generative AI prompts to help students create their coloring pages and decorate them with multicolor and decorative brushes.

It is important to note that the platform does not use AI to generate text, so Adobe Express would not be a practical tool for text-intensive assignments like research papers.

For those more concerned about maintaining student privacy and ethics in the classroom, the platform follows Adobe's "your data is your data" privacy approach, as stated in the release. This means Adobe, which implements safety measures that further promote a "secure learning environment," will not train its models on student or teacher assignments or labor.

Also:  How Pearson's AI assistant can help teachers save time

Most of the new features in Adobe Express for Education are now available worldwide, including a self-service option that allows admins to set up Adobe Express for entire school districts. The Generate Coloring Pages and Assignments features are still to come, as is iPad support for the platform. 

Artificial Intelligence

One of the best budget android phones i've tested is not made by samsung or oneplus, one of the best tablets for entertainment i've tested is not an ipad air or samsung galaxy tab, the most immersive speaker system i've ever tested isn't from bose or polk.

• Gradescope Guides
• Instructors
• Managing Assignments
• Assignment Types

Gradescope allows you to grade paper-based exams, quizzes, bubble sheets, programming assignments  (graded automatically or manually) and lets you create online assignments that students can answer right on Gradescope.

In this guide:

Assignment Types and Features

Using gradescope for paper-based assignments, exams & quizzes, homework & problem sets, multi-versioned assignments.

• Bubble Sheet Assignments

Programming Assignments

• Online Assignments

The following table details Gradescope assignment types and features .

*The file-upload question type can be used for students to upload images of their handwritten work.

**Certain question types can be auto-graded: Multiple choice, select all, and fill in the blank.

For paper-based assignments, Gradescope works well for many types of questions: paragraphs, proofs, diagrams, fill-in-the-blank, true/false, and more. Our biggest users so far have been high school and higher-ed courses in Math, Chemistry, Computer Science, Physics, Economics, and Business — but we’re confident that our tool is useful to most subject areas and grade levels. Please reach out to us and we can help you figure out if Gradescope will be helpful in your course.

To grade exams or quizzes you will start by creating a new assignment on Gradescope. 

Once the assignment is created, you’ll:

• Mark the question regions on a template PDF ( Creating an outline )

See our tips for formatting the assignment template PDF and outline for automated roster matching of submissions.

• Create rubrics for your questions if applicable (See Creating Rubrics in Grading Submissions )
• Upload and process scans*  ( Managing scans )
• Match student names to submissions*  ( Managing submissions )
• Students can use the Gradescope Mobile App to scan and upload their handwritten assignments.
• Grade student work with flexible, dynamic rubrics ( Grading )

When grading is finished you can:

• Publish grades and email students ( Reviewing grades )
• Export grades ( Exporting Grades )
• Manage regrade requests ( Managing regrade requests )
• See question and rubric-level statistics to better understand what your students have learned ( Assignment Statistics )

*Not applicable if students are uploading their own work.

You will need to give the assignment a title and upload a blank copy of the homework to create the assignment outline you’ll use for grading. By default, the Homework / Problem Set assignment type is set up for students to submit work. In a typical homework assignment, students will upload their work and be directed to mark where their answers are on their submissions ( Submitting an assignment ), making them even easier for you to grade. 

If you want to scan and submit work for your students, you can change the Who will upload submissions? setting to Instructors and follow the steps above in the “Exam and Quizzes” section. If needed, you can also submit on behalf of your students, even if you’ve originally set the assignment to be student-uploaded. See more on that on our Managing Submissions help page.

Next, Gradescope will prompt you to set the assignment release date and due date, choose your submission type and set your group submission policy ( Submission Type ). Next, you can select Enforce time limit and use the Maximum Time Permitted feature to give students a set number of minutes to complete the assignment from the moment they confirm that they’re ready to begin. Under Template Visibility , you can select Allow students to view and download the template to let students view and download a blank copy of the homework after the assignment release date.

Assignments with a set time limit are not compatible for student upload on the Gradescope Mobile App.

Then, you will create the assignment outline ( Creating an outline ) and either create a rubric now or wait for students to submit their work. You can begin grading as soon as a single submission is uploaded (although we recommend waiting until the due date passes, since students can resubmit), and you can view all student-uploaded submissions from the Manage Submissions tab. The rest of the workflow is the same as exams and quizzes: you can publish grades, email students ( Reviewing grades ), export grades ( Exporting Grades ), and manage regrade requests ( Managing regrade requests ).

The Organize Exam Versions feature lets you group together multiple instructor-uploaded Exam or Homework assignments into an Exam Version Set. Please note that assignment versioning is style="color: #d33115;"not available on Online Assignments, Programming Assignments, or any other type of student-uploaded assignment . To see how to use this feature on your instructor-uploaded Exam or Homework assignments, check out the article on Creating and Grading Multi-Version Assignments .

Bubble Sheets

Bubble Sheet Assignments are available with an Institutional license .

If your assignment is completely multiple choice, you should consider using the Bubble Sheet assignment type . With this type of assignment, you need to electronically or manually distribute and have students fill out the Gradescope Bubble Sheet Template . You can then mark the correct answers for each question ahead of time, and all student submissions will be automatically graded.

Bubble Sheet assignments allow up to five versions of the assignment during the creation of instructor-uploaded assignments. To learn how to add more than one version, check out our guide on Creating multiple versions .

By default, the Bubble Sheet assignment type is set up for instructors to scan and upload. However, you can change this by choosing Students under Who will upload submissions? in your assignment settings and following the steps in the Homework and Problem Sets section of this guide. If submissions will be student-uploaded, you can also enable Template Visibility in your assignment settings to let students download a blank, 200-question bubble sheet template from Gradescope when they open the assignment. If you enable template visibility on a Bubble Sheet assignment, please note that you will not need to upload a blank bubble sheet for students to be able to download it, and the template students can download will contain five answer bubbles per question, but no question content.

Once the assignment is created you’ll:

• Create an answer key and set grading defaults ( Bubble Sheet specific features )
• Upload and process scans * ( Managing scans )
• Match student names to submissions * ( Managing submissions )
• Review uncertain marks and optionally add more descriptive rubric items ( Reviewing Uncertain Marks )
• Grade the bubble sheet assignment ( Grading a Bubble Sheet assignment )

And when grading is completed you can:

However, there is also an additional analysis page for Bubble Sheet Assignments - Item Analysis. We calculate a discriminatory score, or the correlation between getting the question right and the overall assignment score.

Programming assignments are available with an Institutional license . 

With Programming Assignments, students submit code projects and instructors can automatically grade student code with a custom written autograder and/or manually grade using the traditional Gradescope interface.

When setting up a Programming Assignment, you’ll have a few unique options to choose from for this specific assignment type which you can learn over in the programming assignment documentation .

After the assignment is created , the workflow is similar to other student submitted assignments:

• If you wish to manually grade questions, you’ll add them to the outline
• If you wish to use an autograder, you’ll set it up next ( Autograder Specifications )
• Wait for submissions from students

Programming Assignments are not compatible for student upload on the Gradescope Mobile App.

• Grading a programming assignment
• Optionally, manually grade student work ( Manual Grading )

And when grading is completed you have access to the usual steps:

For more information about programming assignments and autograders, check out the Programming Assignment documentation .

Online Assignments (Beta)

Online assignments are available with an Institutional license .

Currently in beta, an Online Assignment offers the following features:

• Allows you to create questions directly on Gradescope.
• Students will be able to log in and submit responses within the Gradescope interface.
• If you’d like, you can also give students a set number of minutes to submit their work from the moment they open the assignment.
• Additionally, you can choose to hide questions and responses once the due date passes or the time limit runs out to help prevent students who have completed the assignment from sharing questions and answers with students who have not finished working.
• For multiple choice, select all, and short answer questions, you can indicate the correct answer ahead of time, and student submissions will be automatically graded. You can also add a File Upload field to a question that will allow students to complete their work on that question outside of Gradescope and then the upload files. For example, a photo or PDF of handwritten work can be uploaded that contains their answer.

After creating the assignment:

• Enter your questions using the Assignment Editor ( Online Assignment specific features )
• Create rubrics for your questions if applicable ( See Creating rubrics in Grading Submissions )
• Optionally, manually grade student answers

Online Assignments are not compatible for student upload on the Gradescope Mobile App.

And when grading is completed, you have access to the usual steps:

• Manage regrade requests ( Managing regrade requests ).

Articles in this section

• Assignment Settings Overview
• Creating Multi-version Assignments
• Creating and Editing Sections for Assignments
• Linking an assignment or gradebook column from an LMS to Gradescope
• Extending assignment release dates, due dates, and time limits
• Managing Submissions
• Writing Formulas and Equations (LaTeX) for Assignments
• Using Markdown for Assignments
• Duplicating an Assignment

You're signed out

Sign in to ask questions, follow content, and engage with the Community

• Canvas Instructor
• Instructor Guide

How do I assign an assignment to a course group?

• Subscribe to RSS Feed
• Printer Friendly Page
• Report Inappropriate Content

in Instructor Guide

Note: You can only embed guides in Canvas courses. Embedding on other sites is not supported.

Community Help

View our top guides and resources:.

To participate in the Instructure Community, you need to sign up or log in: