Canvas makes it easy to submit assignments on your Android device by linking them from third-party apps, such as Google Drive and Dropbox.

The images in this lesson are shown for a phone display, but unless otherwise noted, tablet displays mirror the same steps.

Note: Before uploading an assignment to the Canvas app:

• The assignment must already be uploaded to the third-party app
• The third-party app must be installed on your Android device

You can create online assignments for students to submit their assignments through Canvas.

When allowing file uploads as an online entry option, you can restrict certain types of files for assignment submissions. In the case of restricting assignments with an odd or unusual file type, try adding it to your course to confirm the file is accepted before requesting students to submit the file type.

If your institution has enabled Google Docs, the Google Apps LTI, or the Microsoft Office 365 LTI, students can upload files from their respective Google Drive or OneDrive account directly. (If only Google Docs are enabled for your institution, students must connect to Google Drive as a web service to submit an assignment as a Google Doc, Google Sheet, or Google Slide.) You can allow Google Drive and OneDrive files as submission types by selecting the File Uploads checkbox when creating an assignment.

Google Drive File Types

Students can submit Google Doc (.gdoc), Google Sheet (.gsheet), or Google Slide (.gslide) files. They can also use Google Docs to submit uploaded Word (.doc/.docx), Excel (.xls/.xlsx), PowerPoint (.ppt/.pptx), and PDF files not converted to Google Docs formatting.

When Google file types are submitted as an assignment submission, those files will convert to their Microsoft counterpart file types and appear in the submission as respective Word, Excel, or PowerPoint files. Canvas uses the conversion file type for submissions (and to render supported file types as Crocodoc files in SpeedGrader), so if you want to restrict file types to only include Google file types, you must also include the file types for each respective Microsoft file type as well. For instance, if you want to only allow Google Slide submissions, you must include .pptx as a restrictive file type, otherwise Canvas will not show the .gslide files in the Google Doc tab.

Turnitin File Types

If your institution has enabled Turnitin, you can create a Turnitin assignment. Turnitin accepts various file types and images.

If your institution allows, you can upload an image to display behind the course card in the Canvas Dashboard. Accepted images include JPG, JPEG, GIF, and PNG files. For best practice, images should be approximately 262 pixels wide by 146 pixels high.

Images can also be added from Flickr; the search results display images with a Creative Commons public domain license.

When added to a course, images display behind a color overlay in the course card. The overlay color is a user setting defined individually by each user in the Dashboard. For best practice, use an image that can display well behind a variety of colors.

Note: Adding an image to a course card is currently a course opt-in feature. To enable this feature, learn how to manage feature options in the course features lesson.

You can view a course the same way that your students view your course through Student View. Enabling Student View creates a Test Student in your course. You can activate Student View in your Course Settings.

To see the student's perspective on Canvas, use Student View to view the course, post and reply to discussions, submit assignments, view grades, view people, view pages, view the syllabus, view quizzes, view the calendar, and view the scheduler (if enabled).

Attendance, conferences, conversations, collaborations, differentiated assignments, groups, peer reviews, and profiles do not work for the Test Student. You will see only what you, as the instructor, allow your students to see.

Notes:

• Each Canvas course has a separate Test Student account. Whenever you move to a new course you will need to enable Student View for that course.
• Submissions and scores for the Test Student do not affect course analytics.
• You can only view the course layout as it is seen by your students. You cannot view student-specific information, such as conversations between students.
• Once you activate Student View, the Test Student is shown at the end of the Gradebook and is automatically added to every section in your course. If you want to remove the test student completely, you will have to remove the test student from your section enrollments.