I'm relatively new to Canvas and wanted to make an assignment that was optional—something that people could submit if they wanted (not for credit). In case this is helpful, I wanted to give them the option to submit a paper proposal to me, but won't require them to do so. It looks like I can't make an assignment optional in Canvas; the best I can do is to make it worth 0 points and exempt everyone who didn't submit on the back end. I contacted Canvas support about this, and they confirmed that there is no way to create an optional assignment. I think it'd be great if the developers would come up with a way to do this, since it's frustrating to have to manually exempt folks who don't submit retroactively. Thanks for your consideration!