Canvas Corner: Student Annotation Submissions

On May 15th, Canvas released the following update where instructors can provide a file as an assignment and allow students to annotate the file directly in Canvas. Currently, students have to either print the file and take a photo to submit or use a third-party tool to complete the submission. 

Affected User Roles 

Instructors 

On the assignment creation page, instructors can select the option to create a Student Annotation assignment type. The file that should be annotated is uploaded for the assignment, and students can use the annotation tools with DocViewer to complete the assignment. This assignment type is included under the online assignment types so that instructors can select additional submission options for students unable to annotate onscreen. 

Peer reviews are supported for student annotation submissions. However, Anonymous Peer Reviews are not supported for student annotation assignments, as the names of students are not displayed anonymously in annotations. 

Completed submissions are viewed in SpeedGrader with the student’s annotations shown for grading.  

Notes: 

• Student annotation assignments cannot be used for group assignments. 
• Assignment Enhancements currently do not support student annotation assignments. 
• Although annotations are supported in the Canvas Student app, this specific assignment type is not currently supported for mobile devices. If instructors want students to be able to annotate a document via the mobile app, they should also use the File Uploads submission type and provide the original file in the assignment description for students to download and annotate in the app. 

Students 

Students can complete the annotation assignment directly in Canvas using the annotation tools in DocViewer.  

If a student later views a previously submitted attempt, the annotations on the file are shown as read only and additional annotations are not allowed. 

To learn more about this feature update in the Canvas Release Notes.