Set up Grammarly Authorship in Canvas LMS

How Grammarly Authorship works

Grammarly Authorship helps students show their writing is original by automatically labeling their text as written by them, created with AI, or edited with Grammarly. Grammarly Authorship is available through the Grammarly browser extension and Grammarly’s desktop app. 

Your privacy and security are a priority, so Grammarly Authorship is an opt-in feature that will not track text sources without your consent. Authorship stores all activity locally and shares data only when a user explicitly clicks “share report” and submits an assignment. 

Once Grammarly Authorship for Canvas is installed, instructors will have a checkbox on all new assignments that prompts students to turn on Authorship in their preferred document editor: Google Docs or Microsoft Word. When students submit assignments with their writing reports, instructors can view all reports for each assignment to identify baseline trends or focus on specific students’ learning needs.

Steps to install Grammarly Authorship for Canvas LMS

To operate inside of Canvas, Grammarly Authorship needs the following things to be completed by a Canvas admin:

1. Install Canvas Data Services
2. Add a Live Event Data Stream to Data Services
3. Install the Grammarly Authorship App
4. (Optional) Create an Auth Token to support Microsoft Word .docx submissions
5. Install Grammarly LTI Enhancements JavaScript
6. Install Grammarly LTI Style CSS

Add a Live Event Data Stream to Canvas Data Services

First, follow Canvas’s official setup instructions. This step will enable our systems to capture and analyze student submissions and ensure this data stream receives all submissions across all courses. The first step in processing any submission is to verify that the assignment_id matches the assignment with the corresponding selected checkbox. To preserve student privacy, all assignments that are not explicitly selected will be discarded and not logged. Selected assignments will be processed immediately and stored on our secure servers, with the same permissions as the reports they are associated with. Only information that the student explicitly allows to be shared will be shared.

Create a new Data Stream with the following configuration:

• Name/Title: Authorship Submissions
• Delivery Method: HTTPS
• URL: https://gateway.grammarly.com/lms/v1/lti/data-stream
• Subscriptions: Submission (User Generated and System Generated)
• Sign Payload: Checked

Install the Grammarly Authorship App

1. Go to the Admin panel → Apps → open the Manage tab, then click Install New App.

2. In the Dynamic Registration URL field, enter the following URL and click Next: https://authorship.grammarly.com/lti/canvas/install

   

3. On the next step, click Connect to Grammarly.

   

4. In a new tab that opens, you may be prompted to sign in. Once you do, you should see Connection successful. Close this page and return to the previous one.

5. Canvas will ask you to acknowledge the placements and permissions the application requires. Click Next to proceed.

   

6. On the Data sharing step, keep the selected option and click Next.

   

7. On the Placements step, keep all options selected and click Next.

   

(Optional) Create an Auth Token to support Microsoft Word .docx submissions

For Grammarly Authorship to process Microsoft Word .docx files, it requires authorization permission from Canvas admins or instructors. After authorization, a read-only token is generated for the authorized user and used to call the Canvas API to submit data.

The following steps must be completed by a Canvas admin:

Go to Admin → Developer Keys → Inherited, and enable Grammarly Authorship API Key.

Install Grammarly Authorship External App

Grammarly Authorship will appear as a checkbox in the Edit Assignment page. This allows instructors to request Writing Reports from students for individual assignments.

1. In the Admin panel → Settings → Apps, click on the Manage tab, then click View App Configurations.

   

2. Click + App.

   

3. In the Configuration Type dropdown, select By Client ID.

   

4. Enter the Client ID that Canvas assigned to you in the previous step, then click Install.

   

5. Choose which placement to use: Go to the Grammarly Authorship app settings and choose Placements.

   

6. Select Submission Type Selection as shown below.

   

Install Grammarly LTI Enhancements JavaScript

To fully integrate Grammarly Authorship into Canvas, we need to add capabilities to your current installation. This is done by adding custom JavaScript and CSS to your theme. We provide a simple JavaScript bundle that dynamically loads enhancements from our web servers, so it stays in sync with the latest updates.

1. Go to Admin Panel → Themes, then click Open in Theme Editor for your current theme: 

2. 

3. Add the following JavaScript to your theme: https://authorship.grammarly.com/lti/static/canvas/lti-enhancements-embed.min.js

Install Grammarly LTI Style CSS

Canvas applies a common min-height: 450px value to all external tools in the assignment_view placement. This makes it impossible to resize the external tool to match content that is smaller than 450px vertically. To fix this, follow these steps:

1. Go to Admin Panel → Themes. Then click Open in Theme Editor for your current theme: 

   

2. Add the following CSS to your theme: https://authorship.grammarly.com/lti/static/canvas/lti-enhancements.css

This CSS rule is applied to all external tools. Alternatively, we implemented a custom LTI command called Grammarly:setStyle that lets our iframe adjust its own style without affecting others.

Enable Authorship for assignments in Canvas

Once Authorship is set up, instructors can start enabling it for assignments. Learn more: Enable Authorship for assignments in Canvas