Canvas has an API (Application Programming Interface) which allows for the creation of custom scripts that interact with Canvas data.

We have a number of useful scripts that have been developed for us to provide extra functionality. These scripts require you to first install the Tamper Monkey browser extension on Chrome:

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tampermonkey/dhdgffkkebhmkfjojejmpbldmpobfkfo?hl=en

Tamper Monkey is a user script manager. Userscripts are small computer programs that change the layout of a page, add or remove new functionality and content, or automate actions. In our case, the userscripts add additional functionality to Canvas.

There are three useful userscripts to date that allow us to:

Bulk upload submissions to assignments on behalf of students
Check how long students spent answering their quizzes
Download IP addresses that were used to submit assessments

To use a script, install the tampermonkey extension and then use the links mentioned in the instructions below (clicking on the relevant javascript link should install it, if you have the tampermonkey extension installed in your browser).

The scripts were developed by Wen-Chen Hol: w.hol@auckland.ac.nz

He should be able to assist if you get stuck (or reach out to Peter Bier p.bier@auckland.ac.nz )

1. Bulk upload to a Canvas assignment

The link to install the script is: (suggest using Chrome browser with TamperMonkey installed, as Firefox had some insufficient memory issue when tested with a 2.3+G file)

https://github.com/clearnz/canvas-report-tools/raw/master/assignment-bulk-upload.user.js

Once you have this userscript installed you can follow the steps described below:

0. Make sure you have have a zip file containing the student pdfs you wish to upload. If you are getting this from Inspera, there is a recording explaining how to export student answers from Inspera

1. First we need to submit an assignment as the test student (so that there is an assignment that can be downloaded).

Find the assignment in Canvas (or create it). It needs to be an online assignment which is a "file upload" (i.e. one that students complete by submitting a file). Next go to the student view and then complete the assignment (i.e. upload a pdf document and submit it). Note you can upload any document here (even a blank pdf), we just need to submit something, so that Canvas knows at least one assignment has been submitted. Now leave the student view.

2. Next we need to download the submissions (as doing so will then give us permission to re-upload them, which we need).

After you have exited the student view, go to the assignment and click "Download Submissions", wait for them to download (which shouldn't take too long as there is only what you uploaded for the test student). If you can't see the "Download Submissions" button, check that you did step 1. After downloading the submissions you should now see that the "Re-Upload Submissions" link is there. (downloading the submissions will generate a token provided by Canvas for the teacher to re-upload material, if you don't see the "Re-Upload Submissions" link, you can't use the script.

3. Create an excel file that provides a mapping from the students in the class to the filenames of the pdfs to upload.

This excel file only needs three columns: Name, AUID and File Name. Note that the name should be in the format First Last (e.g. John Smith) not Last, First. You can download an excel sheet from Canvas which contains a column with the required name format by Using the UoA Toolbox "Student List" report. The Student List report gives a handy list of everyone in the class including many useful columns (one of which is the display name in the required format).

Inspera uses a standardised naming scheme when you download pdf files submitted to an assessment. The filenames contained in the zip file will all follow the same format of the AUID (Auckland University student ID number) then an underscore, then a unique ID for the Inspera assessment, another underscore (likely followed by a number) and then ".pdf". e.g.

987654321_12345678_1.pdf

Here 987654321 is the student ID while 12345678 is the Inspera exam ID (the Inspera exam ID will be the same for all students as they all submitted to the same assessment). This means we can use a formula to generate the filename so that we don't have to enter every single filename by hand. See the cell in C2 of the example spreadsheet for a simple formula that can be entered in cell C2, modified and then copy pasted down:

=B2&"_12345678_1.pdf"

4. Click the "Bulk upload Submissions or Comment" link, and follow the steps on screen.

Step 1: Provide the student excel file. There is a link, next to the field, to download the example excel file (see above for more info on required format)

Step 2: Provide the zip file that contains student submissions or annotated files or specific files you want to upload for students. The screen will show 2 buttons for teachers to view missing information or choose to Cancel the upload.

Step 3: Choose Submit file for student or for feedback (pick student if there are no files yet uploaded and you want to mark them in speed grader)

Step 4: Click the "Proceed to upload" button.

5. The upload process will display in the following area.

The window will try to prevent being accidently closed, but if user still chooses to close the window, then the process will stop. Otherwise, it will continue to finish all the uploads (this could take quite a while for a large course with a lot of files).

6. When the message changes to all done, teachers should check whose files haven’t uploaded successfully.

(Reasons of failure could be: file too big, file not included in zip file, student not in class, or a sudden network issue, etc.) Then adjust the student list file and zip file and upload again (you can break things into batches if having trouble uploading all at once).

You might find these videos useful as they show the above process (but without audio)

2. Quiz All Submissions Download

This script allows you to see how long students spent answering their quizzes. If a student answers a 10 question quiz in less time than it would take to read the questions, it means they are simply copying the answers from someone who has already done the quiz.

You can visit this link to update or reinstall the quiz information download script.

https://github.com/clearnz/canvas-report-tools/raw/master/quiz-submissions.user.js

Then when you visit a quiz under Related Items you will see "Quiz All Submissions Download".

Click on this to download a spreadsheet of useful info.

It will capture the last attempt/score and the first attempt/score (we cannot collect all attempt data, as too many connections seem to hit the Canvas throttle limit)

To find suspicious student activity, you can first sort by the last attempt_time_spent, then sort the attempt field, from small to large.

Suspicious students will be at the top list with 1 attempt and a very short time and high score.

Previous report output, the time_spent provided from Canvas, is the student’s last attempt time-spent. The first_attempt_time_spent field could provide valuable information too that the student did spend time answering quizzes.

3. IP address report

This script allows you to access the IP addresses used by students to submit assessments. This is handy when comparing with IP addresses provided by Chegg. Chegg is an online tutoring service which is unfortunately used by some students to get their assignments done for them. Chegg will give us the name, email and IP address for the account used to make requests for assignment answers but the name and email are often not traceable back to a student. However, the IP address can sometimes be used, because if the student submitted their assignment from the same internet connection they used to access Chegg, we can get a match.

This is the link to install the script.

https://github.com/clearnz/canvas-report-tools/raw/master/assignment-remote-ip.user.js

Use the browser with tampermonkey installed, visit the above link, click the install button to install the script.

Then visit your assessment page. This currently only works for file upload assignments and quizzes, not for external tools (e.g. upload to Turnitin).

You should see under Related Items, "Student remote ip information Download".

Screenshot of Canvas quiz page with list of related items. Last item on the list is option Student remote ip information download

The script is simple: it gets all students in the class, gets the date range of the assessment, then queries the student page view activities during that period, collecting all the different ip addresses.

The instructor doesn’t need to run it for every sub-assignment, the report basically covers all the IP addresses a student used during that assessment period time.

Problems with this approach include

If lots of students are using the same IP address (e.g. if they are all in a UoA lab) then the IP address is not unique.
Students can (and do) access Chegg from a different IP address than the one used to submit their assessments (e.g. they might have used the internet over a cell phone connection for accessing Chegg and then their wifi for submitting an assignment).