Canvas Annotation Assignment
Summary
This article describes what an Annotation Submission Assignment is, how a faculty member can set it up, and how students can submit it.
Annotation Assignments in Canvas
Canvas Annotation Assignment is an online submission type for assignments in Canvas. This feature became available in 2021. This assignment type allows the teacher to upload a file to Canvas that the student can then, without leaving Canvas, mark up using the built-in annotation tools (highlight, make comments, draw marks, etc.) as their submission.
Faculty Assignment Ideas
Have students analyze, critique, or respond to prompts (texts, images, or both).
Train academic paper reading skills. Reading academic papers can be challenging to read and learn from without training. Upload a paper (either relevant to this course, or perhaps in a similar field, but not exactly related to this course) and ask the students to read it. Have them use the annotation tools to highlight passages they consider important, make margin notes for questions that remain or their thoughts at that moment of reading, or to make commentary about the structure, flow, and formatting of the paper.
You can provide feedback on important information the student did not take notes on, extraneous highlighting, and other details.
Ask for self-reflection and/or start a class discussion of errors in papers. Use a sample assignment submission like students might hand in and ask them to mark it up. Optionally, you can include a rubric in the template document for the students to fill in. This will allow you to have a discussion with them about the feedback that they find most important. This can also help them to review their own submissions before submitting.
Post a “find errors and correct them” assignment. Especially useful for a language or coding course (but also can apply to others, like math or logic), create an assignment of statements or solutions that have errors in them, and ask students to mark up what the error is, and suggest corrections. Do keep in mind the limitations of annotations as small corrections; do not have problems that require a significant rework. “True or False, but, if false, make it true” assignments are a narrower sub-type of this activity.
Ask students to label a diagram or image as their submission. The student can use point comment tools to label individual parts, or box comments for larger structures that cover an area. This is comparable to a “hot spot” question in some ways. This is only recommended for identifying parts of a diagram, image or document; other assignment types are better for rote whole image identification. This can be used not only for low-level identification (“label the parts of this building’s façade and attribute it to a period”), but also higher-level analysis (“discuss your interpretation of this x-ray”).
Collect student feedback in a specific format, such as providing a form or template that you would like students to fill in for a “360 degree” peer evaluation after a group assignment, but you do not want students to need to download or upload files (and a survey is too much for what is needed).
Fill out “lab notebook” or “observation notebook” documents in a course that does not make heavy use of them to utilize another tool specialized to that purpose.
Faculty Instructions
Create an assignment as usually would.
For the assignment type, choose Online.
Under online entry options, check student annotation.
Choose an existing file (such as a PDF, Word document, or JPG), or upload a new one, that will be the template for the annotation assignment.
Finish completing your assignment settings normally.
Limitations and Opportunities
Limitations | Opportunities |
|---|---|
These assignments are not currently available for use with with peer assessment, but this is planned for the future. | Being developed for the future. |
This type of assignment cannot be made a group assignment. | Please contact LTS@boisestate.edu if you would like to explore group work. |
This is not a multi-user live collaborative document (like Office 365, Google Documents, etc.). | Great for individual assignments. |
Keep in mind that most students do not have a stylus for detail drawing, and drawing with a mouse is imprecise at best. | Be thoughtful about the instructions provided to students - encourage them to use the tools that work best for them. |
All annotations exist as a layer in Canvas displayed over top the original; it is not actually editing the original document. You can export the annotations to a PDF file, where the annotations will exist on the PDF comment layer. | This preserves a copy of the student’s annotation for the instructor to grade. |
Student Instructions
How do I annotate a file as an assignment submission in Canvas?
Your instructor may upload a file for you to annotate as your assignment submission. You can annotate the file and submit the annotated file as your assignment submission from within Canvas.
Note: Group assignments do not support the student annotation submission type.
Navigate to the Assignment you wish to participate in.
Click the title of the assignment to open it.
Select Start Assignment button.
Click the Student Annotation Tab.
To annotate your assignment submission, use the annotation tools in the DocViewer menu. Learn more about how to use DocViewer. See image and description below.
To submit your assignment, click the Submit Assignment button.
To download the file, click the Download icon [1].
To rotate the document clockwise by 90 degrees, click the Rotate icon [2].
To zoom in or out, click the Zoom in or Zoom out icons [3].
To view the document in full screen, click the Fullscreen icon [4].
To select and move annotations, click the Selection icon [5].
To add a point annotation, click the Point Annotation icon [6].
To add a highlight annotation, click the Highlight Annotation icon [7].
To add a text annotation, click the Freetext Annotation icon [8].
To add a strikeout annotation, click the Strikeout Annotation icon [9].
To add a drawing annotation, click the Free Draw Annotation icon [10].
To add an area annotation, click the Area Annotation icon [11].
View Submission
The Sidebar displays information about your submission [1].
If allowed by your instructor, you may choose to resubmit another version of your assignment by clicking the New Attempt button [2]. You will only be able to view the details of your most recent submission in the Sidebar, but your instructor will be able to see all of your submissions.
Once the instructor has graded your submission, the Grades link in Course Navigation displays a grading indicator. You can also see details about your assignment and links to additional feedback in your Grades page.
Notes:
After submitting an assignment, the assignment will still appear in Assignments and in the Syllabus; the listing is not removed with assignment submissions.
When you resubmit an assignment, you can only access and view your most recent submission. However, instructors can view all of your submissions.