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Hi @rachael_donalds !
This question excites me! I've done quite a bit of reflection on my grading practices (Stuck in a 4.0-Scale World), and I continuously come back to the value of formative and summative feedback. It's so powerful to give students information that can help guide them through their learning. While students are point-driven, it's an on-going challenge to make them feedback- and learning-driven.
With my courses, a few ways I easily emphasize feedback in assessments is through Peer Reviews and Learning Outcomes.
With Peer Reviews, students provide feedback for their classmates. As an instructor, you can decide whether or not to make these anonymous between the students, yet you can see who-said-what. (How do I create a peer review assignment?) I think students pick up a lot by looking at peers' work, and they learn to value the time that goes into receiving feedback on their own assignments.
Last year, I ditched points altogether for my major projects. Instead, I made the projects complete-incomplete in the gradebook and focused on providing feedback with Rubrics. My students loved how learning objectives and standards were organized in the rubric, and how the Learning Mastery scores in the Grades page helped them document and plan for their strength and weakness. The Learning Mastery Gradebook was a huge push for me to provide feedback and to coach students on an individual basis. Unknown to the students, I documented grades on my old points-based system and compared it to their progress with standards. I was pleasantly surprised that I saw higher academic achievement when points were not a factor.
To encourage my students to truly utilize the feedback they receive from me and from their peers, I offer them an opportunity to revise any major project within two weeks of receiving a score or critique. If they are motivated to make changes to their project and resubmit, listening to the feedback they received, I usually allow them to resubmit without penalty. ...as long as their first attempt was given genuine effort.
I know there are many ways to get students meaningful feedback in any Canvas course. I'll leave my post at this, for now, as I could talk for white a while!
I can't wait for others to chime in. The potential in this collaborative discussion is amazing. 
Hi @rachael_donalds ! Like Kristin, I've gone for a complete/incomplete approach to grading, where students record completed assignments in the Gradebook directly (with "Declarations" - details here), and I keep all my focus on feedback, while also helping the students learn how to give each other useful feedback too. I don't really use Canvas for that, although being able to put my students in charge of their own grading this way works great in Canvas!
A big boost for that has been making growth mindset an explicit part of the class, and spending a couple of weeks encouraging students to think about feedback and read some articles about both giving and receiving feedback.
Here's how I introduce students to growth mindset in the first week:
Then here are the follow-up assignments about feedback:
And I make growth mindset a regular part of the class by including growth mindset cats every day in the announcements, etc. I keep my growth mindset resources at this blog:
I also built a Canvas resource course to share those materials:
Exploring Growth Mindset: Exploring Growth Mindset
Since I teach writing, and I really want to emphasize the creative, risk-taking aspects of writing, getting rid of grades and shifting to feedback has worked really well, and the students also seem very eager to learn about feedback strategies since they can see how that skill goes far beyond the classroom and applies to their future professional lives!
To grow, you need constructive criticism. 🙂
AGREED. And I just added a Flipgrid to my classes! This is something new, but I hope it will be yet another way I can connect with students... I've always loved teaching online, but new tools like this make it even more fun. 🙂
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