New Canvas Feature: Submit Assignment on Behalf of Student

Scheduled to be released March 18, Instructure is adding another much-requested feature to Canvas: Submit Assignment on Behalf of Student. This will allow a teacher in a course to submit a student upload to an assignment. The teacher can upload a document that their student has given them in some other way while retaining the ability to annotate and retain submission history in Canvas.

This new feature is part of the March 2023 Canvas release. You can read more below, or you can go to the Canvas release notes page.

Feature Video

Usage

Recommended Use

We do recommend, when possible, that the teacher use the existing standard in Canvas for student submissions. That would be to assign missing assignment to the student individually (as one would for an accommodation or extension) and then ask them to submit it through the standard process.

Additionally, a teacher can only submit on behalf of a student for a file upload assignment (not text entry, quizzes, or discussions).

How To Use

To submit on behalf of a student:

  1. Go to the grade book
  2. Find the assignment and student (use the student and assignment search filters above the gradebook to find it quickly!)
  3. Click in the cell and click the Grade Detail Tray icon (it looks like a door with an arrow)
    Screenshot illustrating the location of the grade detail tray <a href=icon to the right of a cell." width="400" height="199" />
  4. Click Submit for Student around the top of the panel:
    Screenshot highlighting the location of the Submit for Student link, after name, assignment, and SpeedGrader.
  5. Follow the prompts to select the file and upload from your computer

Details and Limitations