Panopto Watch Assignment in Canvas: Grade on Percentage Viewed

When Would you Use This

An instructor wishes to assign students to watch a video and grade based on the percentage of the video that was watched. This process can be automated by creating an "External Tool Assignment" in Canvas, leveraging the Panopto integration, so that instructors don't have to manually check video analytics.

Instructor Setup

  1. In Canvas, create a new assignment or edit an existing assignment
  2. In the Assignment Edit page, for Submission Type, select External Tool, and then select the Find button. Note: If you select the checkbox for Load This Tool In A New Tab, your students will be prompted to launch the video in a new browser tab. If you leave this unchecked, the video will embed and play directly within the Canvas assignment. 
  3. A pop-up window with a list of external tools will appear. Select Panopto Video.
  4. An additional pop-up window will appear over the Panopto course folder, which prompts you to choose how the assignment should be graded. Select Grade on % viewed and then click Continue.
  5. Select the Panopto video you'd like the students to view and then select Insert.
  6. Click "Select" one more time to close the "Configure External Tool" window. 
  7. Configure any additional settings (due date, points, etc) on the Assignment Edit page, then click Save, or Save and Publish if you are ready to publish.

Student Experience

  1. Students must open the Canvas Assignment and click to watch the video through the Canvas assignment. This is crucial, they must click on the specific link to the video that is in the Canvas assignment. If they click to open the video from any other location (such as the Panopto course folder), their percentage viewed will not be recorded.
  2. Clicking on the link (as described in Step 1) constitutes a "launch" of the video. Exactly 3 hours after the launch is initiated, the percentage the student has watched will be recorded and sent to the Canvas gradebook. Please consider the following possible scenarios:
    1. If the video is short, and the student watches it in entirety right away, their percentage watched will still not be recorded until 3 hours after the launch.
    2. If the video is longer than 3 hours, or, if the student watches the video intermittently over the course of several hours, at the 3-hour mark, the percentage viewed at that point will be recorded and sent to Canvas. If the student continues watching, without initiating a second launch, their grade will NOT be updated until a second launch is initiated.
  3. If the student clicks on the video at another time through the Canvas assignment (as described in Step 1), this initiates a second launch. This second launch triggers Panopto to send an updated grade to Canvas. The updated grade will always be the highest percentage the student has watched. So if they only watch a few minutes/seconds during the second launch, it will not overwrite their grade with a lower percentage. However, if their percentage watched during the first launch is not up-to-date (as described in 2b above), then this second launch will trigger Panopto to update the grade to the percentage watched during launch #1, including what was watched after the 3-hour mark. Please note that students will not be able to initiate additional launches if the instructor has limited the "Allowed Attempts" in Canvas (or if the assignment has closed).

Additional Caveats

  • Instructors must choose either "Grade on % Viewed" or "Grade on Quiz Results," not both. So this workflow does not support also including embedded quizzes.
  • Students must click on the link to the video in the Canvas assignment in order for their percentage viewed to be recorded and sent to the Gradebook. If the students click on the video from a different placement (such as directly from the Panopto course folder, or a video link placed in a module), their percentage viewed will not be recorded in the gradebook. Even though it is the same video, and video analytics will reveal that the student watched it, it will not trigger the grade passback to Canvas. Therefore, it is important to communicate to students that they must click on the link in the Canvas assignment in order to get credit. If an instructor wishes to make regular use of this feature in a course, it may be wise to hide Panopto Video from course navigation, and not place additional links to videos elsewhere in the course.

Additional Resources:

Panopto Guide: How to Use a Panopto Video as a Canvas Assignment (includes more details and screenshots)

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