Message students who... Haven't submitted yet (Developer/Admin)

[joshuah_martin]

Recently we have had contact with a user who would like to be able to send messages to students who have not submitted yet but are seeing the whole roster. 

On our side, we update a submission with the user's score. However, this does not appear to update the user's submission as submitted. Is there any method that a developer using the API can take in order to get both the submitted and graded options in "Message students who..." correct? It does not appear that the put request has the parameters necessary for this. 

[Ron_Bowman · Accepted solution]

@joshuah_martin -

Your first sentence has me confused.  Because I can send a message to only students who have not submitted.  I wrote what is below first, and now I am adding in that I may not be following exactly what you are trying to ask.  

I played around with this some, and what I found is:
1) the assignment must have a submission capability to actually see the message students who have not submitted
2) Any student not having a grade is in the list of message students who have not been graded
3) If a student just receives a grade, but did not submit through the assignment - i.e. sent it to the teacher instead or turned it in in person, then they are still on the message students who have not submitted list (I believe this is what you are referring to)

For a normal case, I believe that everything works fine.  A problem arises if a teacher wants online submissions and takes some submissions in person or via email.  Then you run into issues.

For a normal case where all submissions are done through the assignment, then the message students who have not submitted works fine. 

If the teacher takes submissions other than through the assignment, then you have an issue of not being able to correctly contact the correct students who have not submitted.  Of course you can always deselect the non-standard submission students from the list of students to message for not submitting.

[joshuah_martin]

@Ron_Bowman

Thank you for your reply!

I am sorry for the confusion that I have caused!

I am attempting to understand your response and its relation to our current situation.

I would like to clarify our problem a bit more. We are using the Canvas API to create linked assignments to our own LMS assignments. When we create these linked assignments a submission is created in the grade book.

If a student completes the assignment through our LMS (which they will need to do), then we update the assignment's submission with a grade (score).

The issue arises at this point. Although Canvas is recording the assignment as graded with a score that we sent over, it does not appear to be counted as submitted (the students still show up in the message students who have not submitted category).

From my understanding of your response, this is expected behavior? I am not very knowledgeable about assignments made directly through Canvas, but it sounds like the only way for Canvas to know that an assignment has been submitted is if it was a Canvas-made assignment and not one linked outside of Canvas?

Do you know of a way for us to make sure that our assignments have submission capability?

Thanks for your help on this matter!

Josh

[Ron_Bowman]

@joshuah_martin -

By expected behavior, I was thinking strictly within Canvas.  having the explanation of what you are doing (in a way I understand better), I see what you are talking about.  Question I have is that I assume the assignment in canvas is setup to receive submissions.  If that is the case, then a submission actually has to be made to the canvas assignment to have it show as submitted.  If there is just a grade posted, then as you have seen, it still shows as unsubmitted.

My question is then is the actual submission being sent from your LMS over to Canvas?  Or is it just on your own LMS?  If it is just the grade that is going over to Canvas, then I would make the assignment one without submissions and then you would just message students who do not have a grade (this requires the instructor to grade all submissions on your LMS and transferring the grades first)

Not sure if that helps any, but other than that I am out of my league.

[joshuah_martin]

@Ron_Bowman

Thank you for taking the time to respond!

What you have mentioned makes sense to me. I will need to look further into making the assignment one without submissions, however, it sounds like the behavior is working as I would expect it too based on your response.

Thanks again for your help on this!

Josh