Notify Students When DocViewer Annotations Have Been Left By a Teacher

[khaus]

I give my students detailed feedback on their essays using the DocViewer annotations. However, many of my students never see my feedback because they are not alerted when I leave annotations. When I leave a comment, it shows a small dialogue box next to the assignment in the grade book, but there is nothing that alerts them to annotations. It's impractical to rely on students to click on the assignment, click submission details, and then click view feedback when they have no way of knowing if feedback has even been left. 

This idea has been developed and deployed to Canvas

For details, please read through the Ready Release Notes (2020-04-25) .

[Stef_retired]

Thank you for submitting this idea,  @khaus ‌. You might also be interested in adding your feedback to the related idea https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/3254-making-feedback-more-visible-to-students 

[khaus]

I AM interested! Thank you so much! 

[sleitch]

I'd also like it to save...if they resubmit at all, they lose all the original comments. 

[uribes]

It would be great if students were automatically notified for annotations. To deal with this issue right now, I have my students set their Canvas notifications to be notified immediately for the "Submission Comment" option. In the comment box, I usually write, "Please see comments throughout your submission", which lets them know that there are further comments. I do find that they also need instructions on HOW to find their feedback... Hope this helps!

[Stef_retired]

 @uribes ‌, that's the very workflow I adopted when I was marking up my students' submissions via Turnitin (API) quickmarks: I copy-pasted a stock comment in the Submission Comment section that told them to navigate to Turnitin to see my detailed feedback, and the comment included a link with instructions on how to access those comments. I would imagine one could do something similar (i.e. link to the How do I view assignment feedback comments from my instructor using Canvas DocViewer annotations?‌ lesson for students) for DocViewer comments.

[nicole_stahl]

This would also be helpful from the instructor's perspective. We had an instructor ask us about this feature recently. After an instructor has left feedback, students also have the option to leave comments/replies on the submission as well. An instructor would have no way of knowing that a student responded to their feedback directly in the Canvas DocViewer unless the student told them or if the instructor happened to check the submission again. If instructor's also received a notification that would help as well.

[ericwerth]

I agree Nicole.  I learned about this recently and have been concerned that it would be easy for students or teachers to miss comments, particular when one can have multiple assignments using DocViewer over multiple classes.  Even if you mean to, it can be difficult to remember to notify someone that you replied to a comment left in the Viewer.

[marthazumack]

I just heard from an instructor about this. I would have hoped that the 'comments' notification would alert a teacher if a student replied to an annotation comment, but I tested it and it appears not to be the case.

[timothy_maw]

I agree with this. I've had instructors ask about it since students don't always go to the DocViewer comments after something has been graded and don't seem to always realize that there are additional comments there. This would give them a warning and help them see important feedback.

[lindsay_faulkne]

I always wonder if students ever even look at my comments when I am scoring, grading or leaving feedback.  An automatic notification that alerts the student that I have left a comment would be great.  Then I would know my time spent leaving feedback was (more) likely to have been seen by the student.  And it would encourage me to leave better feedback/comments!