It may be the case that a student has submitted their assignment as a media file - for instance, if they have uploaded a photo of their written work. You can view and download this submission in the Speedgrader. 

To access media file student submissions, complete the following steps:

  1. To access Speedgrader, click SpeedGrader, which is available from any assignment, graded discussion or quiz. The submission appears in the Speedgrader preview and can be treated like any other submission whereby you can add feedback through comments attached the the submission or within the submission with markup.
  2. In SpeedGrader, click the down arrow next to the file name on the submission for each student.
  3. Optional: To download student submissions in bulk, click Download submissions on the main assignment page. When the file is finished processing, click Click here to download to download a zip of submissions. Canvas will also include the size of the download file as part of the link for your reference. Bulk downloads can be used for the following submission types: file uploads, text entries (displayed as HTML files), website URLs (displayed as HTML files), and Google Docs submissions.


Troubleshooting image submissions - Media recordings

In some cases, the uploaded image is presented in a video file format, this may happen if the student uses "Record media" to add their image rather than "File Upload". You will see a message saying This submission is a media recording." To access this file, click Click here to view.

These media recordings can often be presented in what looks like very poor quality. You will likely need to increase the quality of the loaded file when you click to access it if you would like to preview it in Canvas.

To increase the quality, you can hover over the symbol to the left of the audio symbol and choose the last setting (694x1080 5152kbps (mp4)). 

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These media files will not appear in a bulk download zip file, and it is not possible to download them using the tools available in Canvas SpeedGrader. While you can add grades and general feedback to these submissions in SpeedGrader, you may need to capture a screenshot of the enlarged, good quality preview and save this to your computer to view the submission offline. If the media file is a video or audio file, some browsers allow you to right click the media, while it is playing the preview, and using the "Save video as..." menu option to save the file to your computer.

For more guidance on organising images on your computer, see Organising student media/image submissions on your computer.