New assignment type: Student Annotations

A new assignment submission type is now available, which enables a teacher to provide a file for students to annotate. Basically, it enables students to have the same annotation tools that teachers have inside SpeedGrader, i.e. draw, comment, strike-through, highlight main points or text passages.

Student Annotation is a new item in the Submission type drop-down list in the Assignments tool. It provides the ability to upload content (PDF, images) for students to annotate. Some examples of possible worksheets that the teacher may provide include:

  • a journal article for students to identify and highlight key points or themes
  • a piece of writing for students of a foreign language to identify certain parts of speech
  • a series of paintings for visual arts students to identify different artistic styles and comment on them.

In the future, this functionality will be extended to peer review to enable students to grade or review each other’s assignments.  

In the Assignments tool, add a new assignment and under Submission type, select Online and then Student Annotation:

 

Select (or upload) the file that you want students to annotate. When each student opens the file, they will be able to annotate it as required, and then submit that as their assignment:

 

Benefit: This change allows teachers to provide a file as an assignment so that students may annotate and submit the file directly in Canvas. Previously, students would have had to either print the file and take a photo to submit, or use a third-party tool to complete the submission.

Note: Remember that at Oxford, Assignments in Canvas are used only for formative assessment, not summative assessment.