Import Grade Comments

[johnpj]

Problem:

Instructors need to upload comments for each student for an external assignment and have it displayed in the gradebook view for students.

Use Case:

This is especially significant when uploading assignment scores from an external system (student response "clicker" tools, Scantron services, external learning assessments). Often those external tools have a comments field with important details regarding the student's performance. In some cases the external system includes critical item information (e.g. "You answered A; The correct answer was B").

Proposed Solution:

1. Allow a comments field (column) in the gradebook import csv file.
2. Display the comment in a similar way that assignment comments are currently handled.
3. BONUS POINTS: Allow the comments to be exported in the Gradebook export csv

[jordan]

Thank you for submitting this feature idea! In order to attract the support of other Canvas users to support an idea we always encourage those who submit feature ideas to review and do their best to comply with these tips: How do I write a good feature idea submission?​

If you need to make any adjustments to your original feature idea, just visit your feature idea page at any time, and click the "Edit" button (right-column), make changes, and click "Publish"

In the meantime I will update your feature idea to go up for voting on January 6th!

[biray]

This idea has moved to the next stage and will be open for voting among the Canvas Community, from Wed. January 6, 2016 - Wed. April 6, 2016.

Check out this doc for additional details about how the voting process works!

[reevesj]

This is a great idea.  If it could be extended to allow for uploading attachments, that would be even better and might have a larger scope of application.  Tests that are given on paper could be graded, scanned, and then uploaded.

[adriw]

A great idea.

We have classes of 400 and scantron answers for each student: AaBbbccDeaABCcbA, where upper-case indicates correct.

A secure method to give every student this information after every exam is super-helpful.

[jringenb]

I also teach classes with 500+ students...having the ability to batch upload comments onto Canvas is essential.  Our old course management software easily supported this feature...

[jamely]

I voted for this more because of the suggestion to export the comments that are left than import. Mostly because I have never used the listed external systems, but it seems like the export would go hand-in-hand with the import.

[tbunag]

This could also be really useful in situations where each student needs a separate access code or other information.  The use case I am considering is when each student receives a separate code to access a particular database or external tool.

This would be more reliable than emailing the codes, since the comments could not be accidentally deleted by the students or mis-directed into a junk mail folder.  It would also ensure that the code is available with the corresponding assignment.  Finally, it would be more practical than individual Canvas messages, since the case I am considering involves hundreds of students.

[reevesj]

I have handled this exact thing by creating a column in the gradebook labeled as a code.  There are limits to the format of the code though.

[vkg]

I continue to hear frustration from instructors that they can't upload a comment via CSV.  It's not that our instructors are typing comments into Excel -- it's always related to some external tool they're using for assignments that already has in it some piece of information for each student (feedback, next steps, a URL).  They want to upload it along with the grade and are frankly shocked to realize they can't.  Just last week an Economics instructor told me that he had his TAs cutting and pasting a text field out of a CSV for each of his 180 students for every homework assignment.  He could upload the grades, but not the text field.

[benjamin_reynol]

As one of those frustrated faculty members - I completely agree that the ability to upload comments would be exceptional.  We had a meeting last semester with Instructure representatives and tried to explain our needs in uploading comments (or any other individualized feedback) into Canvas for large courses - the Instructure representative's response was incredulous and she repeatedly questioned why we could not use the current comment system.  Like many of the responses above - we have resorted to external feedback mechanisms or crazy assignment column tricks.  It would be nice to actually be able to use our LMS to manage our classes.   My running joke within my faculty colleagues has become - our new job is developing Canvas workarounds rather than actually teaching.  In many ways, limitations with Canvas such as this assignment feedback/comment upload issue is hurting us far more than it is helping us.

[cwruck]

Hey folks! Just want to let you know, this is for sure something we want to do! I'm not 100% sure when it'll make it on our roadmap, but it is currently a feature on a project I'm researching and designing~ Gradebook Import/Export.

[cmeagher]

Great! Any sense on release date?

[jsraquet]

This is actually pretty important (maybe critical). If I had known it was impossible I would not have moved from our old LMS to Canvas for this one last semester. Feedback to help students with problems and issues found on their present assignment (instead of just a grade) to help them for the next assignment while it is still live. Am I supposed to do this by emailing all of my students. I have a class of over 200 students and I believe this would add a lot of work to a task that should be a simple upload.

[jsraquet]

Maybe moving to Canvas should have been "something I want to do..."

[kmeeusen]

Hi Jeff:

There are several ways to provide students with grading feedback in Canvas, and the easiest is the Comments field in SpeedGrader (How do I leave feedback comments for student submissions in SpeedGrader? ). All assignments for a course, even ones with no actual Canvas submission can be added to Canvas as an assignment and graded using SpeedGrader (How do I create an assignment shell in an assignment group? ).

I fully recognize that this is a labor intensive process with more than 200 students, but it will allow you to accomplish this work until Canvas updates this feature.

KLM

[jsraquet]

Thank you for the feedback but adding comments student by student is

unreasonable for larger classes - more than labor intensive. My students

have 20-30 assignment per semester. Commenting per student per assignment

would mean entering 4000-6000 comments (individually!). It will not be per

and per but just to have an idea of the magnitude of the problem...

On Wed, Jan 11, 2017 at 1:53 PM, kelley.meeusen@cptc.edu <

[vkg]

Hi, Christi.  Any update for those of us following on when we might see the ability to upload a text field/comments for each student for an assignment?  Regards, Victoria

[cmeagher]

Agreed. It is odd that other LMSs have this as a basic feature while Canvas has had this significant gap in its functionality.

Sent from my Verizon Wireless 4G LTE smartphone

[benjamin_reynol]

Hi Jeff,

Canvas has some fundamental flaws in their design architecture for handling large courses.  This is well known problem with Canvas and, as a company, Instructure has been very slow or relatively non-responsive in dealing with these flaws that plague handling large courses within Canvas.  I have been using Canvas for 3 years and time-after-time I have found the Instructure representatives to not be overly helpful and they simply keep referring to time-intensive workarounds for managing large classes (as you see in the response above).  As long as they continue to ignore these problems, just as fast as Canvas came along, they will fade just like AOL and Myspace.  Rather than waste any more time (3 years was enough), I have redirected my efforts on sharing these major design flaws with other companies so that they can have first-hand insight into the most pressing and frustrating problems with Canvas for those of us in large courses. My last conference call with another company went three times longer than planned as I outlined the issues. Not surprisingly, designers at other tech companies are very interested in hearing how they can build a better product to after large courses.  So, let's not give up hope - perhaps in another 1-2 years we will have alternative solutions from other companies rather than expecting Instructure to be responsive to these large course design failures in their Canvas product. 

[cmeagher]

This is not a workaround. This is what one is forced to do because Canvas lacks a basic feature.