Issue with submission of multiple linked files and folders for assessment

philip_quealy

Hi, I'm a learning technologist assisting an academic with an issue relating to the the submission of multiple linked files.

Students are instructed to submit multiple parts of a CATIA (CAD) project and their associated Excel files. A ZIP file needs to be created containing multiple folders and multiple files, they can contain up to 100 files and folders.

The academic is concerned that the compression process causes additional work for students and  sometimes there are problems with ZIP files being unable to be extracted successfully and opened.

The academic is inquiring if it would be possible for students to be able to submit an uncompressed folder to avoid the extra work for students and issues that may arise from unzipping files and folders but I believe that even if this were possible it would encounter other issues such as submission management and timestamp identification.

• Does anyone else have experience with the submissions of multiple files and folder for an assignment?
• Has anyone else encountered issues with zipping and extracting student submissions?
• Has anyone discovered a better way to handle these type of submissions?

Thanks

Chris_Hofer

Good morning, @philip_quealy ...

Full disclosure, I am not an instructor but have several years of LMS admin experience including Canvas.

Thank you for the detail of your question.  My initial thought is that a *.zip file is the way to go if students are required to submit multiple files.  This would be especially true if there are several files as you've described.  To my knowledge, there is no way to select a "folder" of files to submit.  Rather, students can attach multiple files for the same submission...as show under the heading "Select Submission Type" of this Guide:

How do I submit an online assignment?

Notice the option to "+ Add Another File".

If the instructor allows for re-submissions, the student could also do that multiple times, and each re-submission is date and time stamped accordingly.  But, I realize with many files (that haven't been included in a *.zip file), that might not be ideal.  In addition, from an instructor's perspective, the instructor would have to go through each submission (and ultimately re-submission) to see the files that were submitted.  See the section on "Evaluate Multiple Submissions" in this Guide:

How do I view the details of a submission for a student in SpeedGrader?

I suppose one other idea would be to have students upload their files to an external account like Dropbox, Google Drive, or Microsoft OneDrive.  In theory, they could create a folder of files and have it only available to share with you.  Then, they would submit a URL from their cloud storage to that location so you could access the files.  But, if you wanted everything to be stored in Canvas and not a third-party product, I could see where you'd not want to use this option.

It may be that the instructor needs to provide very clear instructions for students on how the files need to be submitted (zipped up).  You could even look for documentation like this as a reference for students:

• Zip and unzip files - Microsoft Support
• How to Zip and Unzip Files and Folders on Mac (howtogeek.com)

Hopefully some of these ideas and links might be of some help to you.  I look forward to hearing what you and others have for feedback in this conversation.