Overview
Sometimes instructors can forget to publish assignments or have assignment settings enabled that prevent students from accessing assignments.If one or more students are unable to view or access an assignment here are a few steps you can take to ensure that everything is configured correctly. This article will primarily focus on assignments but generally applies to other areas of Canvas such as Quizzes, Discussions, Pages etc.
Instructions
Confirm the status of the existing assignment status
In Course Navigation, click the Assignments link [1]. Then verify that the assignment is listed on the Assignments page [2].
Confirm Assignment Status
Check the assignment's publish status icons. A circle with a checkmark icon indicates that the assignment is Published [1]. A circle-backslash icon indicates that the assignment is Unpublished [2]. Students can only view published assignments.
To publish an assignment, click the Unpublished icon.
Review Availability Dates
Click the assignment name [1] and then click the Edit button [2].
View the assignment availability dates in the Assign section [3].
Availability dates determine when students can view and submit an assignment. If the date is before or past the assignment availability date range, students cannot submit the assignment.
Review Assign to Fields
By default, Canvas assigns new assignments to all students enrolled in your course.
If you specified a group, section in the Assign to field, you may need to verify that students are properly enrolled in a section or assigned in a group (i.e. you have assigned the assignment to section-02 but the students that need to take the assignment are in section-01.
Also check to make sure that you have not removed the primary assignment groups when creating secondary assignment groups (i.e. you pressed the + Add button and add a separate assignment to accommodate a student but accidentally removed the rest of the class when setting up the accommodations for the student (When using the + Add button, "Everyone changes to "Everyone Else" in the Assign to field.
Confirm Module Status
If you use modules in your course, in Course Navigation, click the Modules link.
Check the published and unpublished icons.
Confirm both overall module [1] and the module items [2] are marked as published. If only one of the two is published, the students will not be able to see all of the content.
Instructors can also use Student View to see what the course looks from a student perspective.
Questions? Need Help?
If you have questions or need some help, please let ITS know by submitting a Raven Solutions request.