Automatic "Missing" designation for assignments from external tool?

[colin_west]

Hello, 

I want to know if it is possible to get Canvas to automatically mark an assignment as "missing" after the due date and/or last available date for the assignment has passed. This seems to happen for assignments where, for example, the student has to upload a file. If they haven't done so by the due date, it gets flagged as missing. But when I give assignments based on an external LTI, nothing happens after the due date. Is there something I can change? 

Thanks!

[Chris_Hofer]

Hello  @colin_west  Welcome to the Canvas Community.  Thank you for posting your question.  Are you setting the due date of the assignment in the external tool LTI?  There are some LTIs (such as Turnitin) where you can configure it such that the due date from Turnitin's LTI populates the due date field in Canvas.  Then, you don't have to make sure you've added a due date in both places.  Since I cannot see the screens you are looking at in your course, are you also editing the assignment to populate a due date in the Canvas interface (not the LTI interface)?  If you add a due date on the Canvas side, it should alert students if they missed the deadline.

Hope this helps, Colin.  Please let us know if you have additional questions about this...thanks!

[colin_west]

Hi Chris, 

Thanks for the quick reply. The LTI I'm using is PlayPosit, and I have not been attempting to set the due dates in the LTI, only in Canvas itself. 

Is "alerting students if they missed the deadline" the same as marking the assignment as missing in my gradebook? The real reason I want to be able to do this is just so that students who miss the deadline will automatically get a score of zero via the gradebook "missing assignment" policy

-Colin

[ataylor30]

Hi Chris,

We actually have an instructor in the same boat using the TestOut tool. The tool does populate the grade from the activity automatically when students take it, and the instructor is putting the due date in on the assignment as well, and that is populating into the Canvas assignment.

What we're wondering is whether or not Canvas will automatically assign the 'Missing' label to an assignment when the submission type is 'External Tool', and that sounds like the same scenario that Colin is interested in as well. Right now it appears that assignments with 'External Tool' at the submission type are dealt with more like 'No Submission' types in that they don't generate a 'Missing' label and thus don't get automatically marked with a zero as the due date passes.

Thanks very much!

[Chris_Hofer]

Hey there,  @ataylor30 ...

Ah!  Are you using the new Gradebook at CVTC?  If so, we have not turned this on yet at Moraine Park.  So, to be completely honest, I am not sure how the "missing" label would work in the new Gradebook with LTIs.  Have you contacted Instructure's Help Desk about this to report it as a possible bug?

[ataylor30]

Correct, since New Gradebook became something I could turn 'on' right before our first semester start, I figured we'd just flip the switch so no one got used to the old gradebook before having to switch eventually.

That will probably be my next step just to verify that I understand everything. My guess is that this is by design, but it will be good to know for sure. Thanks!

[colin_west]

Andrew, I'll be curious to hear what you learn-- I've gotten mixed responses from the folks I've asked. 

For the record, yes, I am also using the new gradebook, and your scenario seems the same as mine. So far my experience is that it does not label any assignments as "missing" after the due date if the submission type is "external tool," although I have only tried two types of external tool so far (Kaltura and PlayPosit).

-Colin

[ataylor30]

Alrighty, chat support confirmed that as of now, the 'External Tool' submission type for assignments does not generate a 'Missing' tag, and so won't be automatically deducted per rules in the gradebook. However, it does look like it automatically removes the item from the student's to-do list upon submission, at least with the Turnitin external tool I just tested. That functionality may differ depending on the tool used.

[JaimeLancaster]

Unfortunately, this is not a solution to the problem. The real question is "how do we assign zeros automatically to missing assignments generated by external tools"?

[IvelisseUrban]

I just discovered the following: Go to the Gradebook, find the Assignment, right click, then choose Missing. That will tag it as such. 

[KelleyRobertson]

The problem with this is that when the student resubmits the assignment, the Missing tag stays...and you have to manually go in and remove it. 

[shirasandford]

I'm wondering if there is an update to this post as I am having the same issue with Testout.

[eritchie]

This is still a problem for me. I have been using the Office 365 Cloud Assignment external tool. It is not populating missing marks or automatic zeros for assignments not turned in after the due date. Is there a fix for this? Or a workaround? I have been assigning Powerpoint slides using the tool, I don't know if that has anything to do with it.

[kgreen-jacotin]

I am having this problem too. The "solution" here is not a solution to the problem. This is a major problem for my students; they do not understand that something is missing unless it says "MISSING" in the gradebook and assigns a default zero. With 160 students I cannot do this manually for all.

[kevin_schaub]

Here we are in 2024 and it doesn't seem there is a solution to this problem?  Why is the "Solution" marked as such.  It's not a solution!!!  Has anyone figured out a solution?  I have to go to each item and set the default grade as a zero, but that doesn't mark the items as missing.  I'm a heavy PlayPosit user and not having Canvas do what we expect it to do on assignments that are past due is a pain!  

[jhenry0302]

Same story here. We must have a way to automate getting the missing assignment flag in for past-due assignments that use external tools.

In my grading scheme, a "0" means something different than "missing." "Missing" means the student ignored the assignment and never even tried or attempted to do it. That has different grading implications than trying and getting a 0, so even manually setting all missing assignments to "0" isn't a viable workaround for me, and neither my time nor my wrist can handle the volume of clicks to manually toggle missed assignments as "missed" in the gradebook UI.

[SydneyFromm]

I only use the Google Cloud assignments for my external assignments. These are also not getting flagged as missing when not turned in by the student. It seems a little crazy to me that this isn't already a feature. 

[jpietropaulo]

I am wondering if anyone has heard if this feature is currently being added.  

[KelleyRobertson]

It is really problematic that external tool assignments do not get an automated Missing tag in Canvas. We are a self-paced school, on top of everything, where students have individualized due dates, so managing all the different missing assignments in this scenario becomes especially burdensome. Is there any hope for Canvas to fix this issue? 

[jhenry0302]

I gave up hope that Instructure would respond to any of this and instead opted to learn the (admittedly well-documented ) Canvas LMS API so I could automate these kinds of things with my own scripts. Unfortunately, that requires a background in coding which is a pretty niche skill among Canvas users like us. One of these days I'll get around to trying my hand at writing a web browser extension or plugin that can do this and make it available for folks to use at the click of a button.

Meanwhile, this is a small slice of what I've done to alleviate Carpal tunnel syndrome (but I fear I just replaced that with early onset "bad eyesight" syndrome 🤣)

Code snippet