Question

I have a professor who created two versions of the same assignment as two separate assignments to allow students to submit the option that suits them best. (This assignment is for a lab course designed for online students). Version 1 is called Option A, and the other one is called Option B.

Is there a way to make one of the assignment options automatically unavailable once they submit in one of them? For example, make Option B automatically unavailable to the student if the student has already submitted their work in the assignment called Option A. Since this is an adjunct professor who teaches multiple sections, she is looking to make things easy on herself.  I have looked at the different workarounds described in the  Two options for assignments, but I don't think any of them apply to my case, as each assignment option has its own separate rubric; the two rubrics are not alike.

NoahBoswell · Accepted Answer

Hi there @EmilianaOlavarr ,

Welcome, and thanks for reaching out on the Instructure Community!

Unfortunately, there is not a direct way in Canvas to make a specific assignment unavailable if a student submits an assignment to a different one. Instead, I'd recommend allowing multiple submission types for one assignment, which would prevent students from having access to a second one.

I hope this helps!
Noah

Chris · Accepted Answer

Hi @EmilianaOlavarr,

Depending on how the rest of the course is setup, you could consider using Assignment Groups for something like this.  You'd essentially create something like a "Choose your assignment" group and place the two assignment options in the group.  While it wouldn't lock the students out of doing the second assignment, a group cold be configured to drop the lowest scored assignment (therefore keeping the highest), but that does mean the assignment the student didn't choose would need to be given a 0 score (which could be done by default, manually, or through a missing policy).  This may not be a great approach if assignment groups are being used for other purposes already in the course, but it's definitely something to consider.

-Chris