A lot of your work in this class will be submitted electronically through Canvas. downloadCanvas Logo.jpeg

The advantages to submitting electronically include:

you are in a blended hybrid learning environment where day-to-day contact is no longer the norm,
you can submit your work when you’re ready rather than having to print it off and wait until class to hand it in,
it’s less likely that you’ll lose an electronic file, damage it, have your dog eat it, or forget to print it, and
Canvas allows me to grade your work directly within the LMS, and all previous versions of your work are kept on file -- so we can work efficiently when you’re revising work, and you can always see earlier drafts, all in one place.

This page contains instructions on how to submit your work electronically using PDF files, especially focusing on how to convert handwritten work to electronic files -- along with an exercise in doing this process that you’ll be doing during the first week of class.

How to convert handwritten work to PDF

If an assignment doesn’t specifically ask you to type up your work, you are free to either type it up or to handwrite your work on paper or a whiteboard and then convert it into an electronic file that can be turned in on Canvas. The standard file format we use in this course is the multi-page PDF because PDF’s are simple to make and share, and Canvas allows me to attach annotations and comments to them directly.

There are several different ways to take your handwritten work and get it into PDF format. Here is one process that students in the past have used successfully:

First, download and install a document scanning app to your phone, tablet, or laptop. There are many such apps available and most of them are free. Popular choices include the following, which are available on iOS and Android: Notes, Genius Scan, Note Bloc, Office Lens, Adobe Scan, Scanbot, and Text Fairy. Try a few out and see which one you like the best.
Write up your work on paper or a whiteboard neatly and legibly. It helps to write a little larger than you normally would.
Once your handwritten work is neat, correct, and ready to be graded, use the scanning app to scan the document.

PLEASE NOTE: Do not just take a picture of your work with your phone’s camera. Work that is uploaded as an image straight from your camera will not be graded. There are at least two major problems with just taking a picture and not using a scanning app. First, the image is usually too large for Canvas, which has an upload limit of 500 MB. Second, I cannot add comments or annotations to image files, just PDFs. So again, you must submit PDFs and not some other file format (unless you get permission first).

Different document scanning apps work differently, and you’ll need to experiment to find out which one works best for you. Generally, what happens is that first, the app uses your phone’s camera to take a picture of the document; then the app applies an algorithm to straighten out the image and convert it to a clean PDF; then there’s an option to export the scanned PDF in some way.

Here’s what that looks like using NoteBloc (other apps are similar):


How the handwritten work actually appears (DON’T SUBMIT A PHOTO LIKE THIS!)	After taking the photo using Note Bloc -- notice it auto-detects the edges and angles on the region to capture	The final product, scanned as a PDF -- notice it’s straightened and put into high contrast

Other ways to get handwritten work to PDF include using a desktop scanner to scan the work, or handwriting the work on a tablet using a note-taking app and a stylus.

Once you have a PDF copy of your work, and you’re sure that it’s neatly done and legible, go to the Canvas Assignment. There is a special icon that indicates an “Assignment” versus a normal document. Here’s the Canvas assignment icon:

When you select the appropriate assignment, you will see a window similar to this:

Select SUBMIT ASSIGNMENT (upper right). You will see the following window allowing you to select the appropriate file.

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IMPORTANT: The work is not submitted for grading yet -- just uploaded to the system. To submit the work for grading, you have one more thing to do: Click the button that says “Submit Assignment”. Your work is not submitted until you click the button!

How to submit typed-up work on Canvas as PDF

Simple: Save your typed-up work as PDF (not Word, or other file formats) then follow Steps 4-6 above. If you are unsure how to convert a file to PDF from some other format, you can Google for help.

How-To Videos

Genius Scan Tutorial

Scan Document on Android

Scan Document on iPhone using Notes

Use PhotoBooth to Scan Documents

CANVAS SUBMISSION PRACTICE ASSIGNMENT

Solve this puzzle:

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On a piece of paper or whiteboard, solve the problem to the best of your ability.
Using a scanning app, convert your work into a neat, legible black-and-white PDF.
Submit your work on Canvas.

You’ve completed the assignment successfully once you’ve uploaded a neat, legible PDF to Canvas.

If you have questions about this assignment, please post them on the class General Discussion Forum.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License