[ARCHIVED] Annotations on Speed grader

[44008519]

I'd like to start by saying that this new interface is completely useless. I am looking for a simple answer to the question of why my students cannot seem to see the annotations that I make in speedgrader. I would greatly appreciate an answer to the question and direction toward where to look for this sort of information in the future. I can't imagine how much more difficult canvas could make look for basic user information. I don't need social networking from canvas, I need a simple users manual. If that exists around here I'd love to know where.

[Chris_Hofer]

Hi 44008519​...

I found this guide which might be helpful: How do I view instructor comments?​  Also, have you checked to make sure your dates for your assignment are set correctly so that none of the dates are preventing students from seeing your annotated feedback?  These are the only things I can think of that you might want to check on.

[44008519]

Also, How did you find that page?

[Chris_Hofer]

Well, I actually went back to the old guides to find out what the name of the guide was called, and then I typed in the keywords of "instructor comments" in the search field of the new Jive community, and the guide came right up.  Searching for guides is more based on keywords...from my understanding.  The setup isn't exactly the same as it was in the old community.  You can read more here (and especially the comments below this guide):

How do I search the Canvas Guides?

[44008519]

But the problem is this isn't the same as "instructor comments". Comments and annotations are two different functions.

[Chris_Hofer]

 @Renee_Carney ​,  @scottdennis , or Deactivated user...would you be able to chime in?  Not sure where to direct Jennifer.

[kona]

44008519, the bottom of the How do I view instructor comments? guide that  @Chris_Hofer ​ found has information for students on how to "View Annotated Comments."

I've also provided a video (see below) that we provide for students in our Mandatory Orientation and a link to our Student page about Crocodoc and how to view annotated feedback - What Is Crocodoc?: Canvas Student Resources - this is on our public Canvas Student Resources course.

As for how I found the How do I view instructor comments? guide - I went to the Canvas Guides​ here in the new community and typed in Crocodoc in the main search box and it was the 8th thing that came up. If you go specifically to the student guides - because it is a student issue - and search for crocodoc it is the 3rd thing that came up. I searched for Crocodoc because that's the specific Canvas feature that is used to provide annotated comments to students. Hope this helps!

[kona]

As a side note -  what we recommend our students and faculty do when they are having a problem like this is to go to where you are having the problem in Canvas - the exact assignment, page, etc - and click on the Help link (upper right corner) and "Report a Problem." This provides a lot of information to your Institution's Help Desk and/or Canvas Support (depending on how your institution has their support set-up). Support will then get back to you and help figure out what the problem is or what needs to be done so things work correctly.

So, my recommendation is if the information I provided above isn't helpful then have one of your students who can't view their feedback go to where they should be able to view their feedback (Grades --> click on name of assignment that has feedback --> Submission Details) and click on the Help Link and then Report a Problem. In the box that comes up to Report a Problem make sure to include that the instructor has provided annotated feedback for this assignment, but that the student is not able to view it.

[Cindy_Masek]

Thank you, thank you!  I too have been looking for this information.  Now it seems so obvious!  I can now tell faculty how to print graded assignments without using dozens or in some cases, hundreds of screen prints. Whew!!

[44008519]

How would the dates prevent the students from seeing the comments?

[Chris_Hofer]

My thought is that it was kind of like a "feedback release date"?  I know that there is a "feedback release date" you can set in the Turnitin LTI app, for example, and so if you set that date to some time in the future and then try testing it out with a student "dummy" account, the student wouldn't be able to see the feedback until you set a date/time that was in the past.  So that's where my thinking was going...not sure if that applies here, though.

[rankp00001]

Here is the link to the new guides area: Canvas Guides

It is displayed very prominently on the Home page, not sure how you could have missed it. There is a giant red button called Find Answers.

[44008519]

Congratulations on being the least helpful person on the internet. The problem was that typing something in there didn't actually take me to an answer. I'm looking for an answer to a very simple question. When I type "instructor annotations" it doesn't bring me back anything despite this being a commonly used feature in Canvas. And the very kind gentleman above found an answer--just not an answer to the question I'm asking because the annotation feature and the comments feature are different things. I'm not interested in digging through two weeks of discussion threads to find the answer to my question.

[Renee_Carney]

 @Chris_Hofer ​    @kona   & rankp00001

Thank you so much for stepping in quickly and helping to thoroughly answer 44008519 questions.  We appreciate such positive and helpful people in this community very much!  It's what makes Canvas users so special! 

[jordan]

44008519​ Thank  you for bringing this to our attention.

We have updated the tags (instructor, teacher, comment, annotation, crocodoc) on this article to make it easier for instructors and students to find info on how to see instructor's comments and annotations.

Now if you search for "instructor annotation" that helpful document will be near the top of the search results. Also note that you can click on the "Filter" button to select that you do not want to see discussions, blog posts, etc. but only documents in your search results. I hope that helps.

Also, just to reiterate... if you are looking for our "users manual" the Canvas Guides​ are the best place to find answers, and the search bar in that place will ONLY return guide articles created by the Canvas Documentation Team. That should keep out all the other content you may not be interested in seeing within the search results.

[erinhmcmillan]

To make this completely more awesome, we're changing the name of this lesson in the next release, and revising the lesson content as well. (We have to wait until this upcoming release because we have a small UI update on the student submission details page.)

We're still working on revising a lot of the titles and information to make the guides better, but in the meantime, if you find something that you think needs clarification, please leave a comment on that article and we'll check into it for you.

Thanks,

Erin

[erinhmcmillan · Accepted solution]

Based on comments about this topic (thank you!) we've revised How do I view assignment comments from my instructor?​ and also created How do I view assignment feedback comments from my instructor using Crocodoc annotations?​ Hopefully those two lessons help clarify the issue of comments vs annotations. Thanks for your feedback!

Erin

[kornowsa]

Thank you for these useful guides.  I have a question that I haven't been able to find the answer to.  When students are viewing their annotated feedback, they get a small window "preview window" on their Chromebooks and it doesn't let them view the document entirely, there is a lot of scrolling involved.  We also tried downloading it and we get the red arrows on the document, but cannot see the feedback bubbles.  I can't find a way to change the settings of the PDF to view anything else.  I was hoping someone had a suggestion how to help students better view this feedback.  Thanks in advance for your help!

[erinhmcmillan]

Hi, Andrea,

Unfortunately that window isn't very customizable at the moment. But our product team wants to eventually make some improvements so that the experience is better. Downloading the PDF should be working just fine as long as you download the version with the comments; you can print the annotations by enabling commenting as part of the PDF print options.

Hope that helps!

Erin

[anthonem]

Hi erinhallmark​​ - I'm glad to see that product is looking to improve the student experience viewing annotations! It would be really great if annotated PDF's auto-open when students access the Submission Details page -- there's probably a feature request somewhere for this. But once they students actually click to view the annotations, the window is not user friendly. I made this request awhile back for a better student view:  

[kornowsa]

Erin-

Thanks for your feedback. Unfortunately with downloading the annotated document on Chromebooks I cannot find a way for the annotations to show up (only the arrows show up) on the document because it does not provide students with print options to add comments.  Any suggestions?

[tom_gibbons]

My experience with the downloaded, annotated PDF is that the comments were not viewable in all PDF renderers. So, if you're using a Chromebook and trying to view the dowloaded PDF through the Chrome browser, that may not work. The only PDF reader I've been able to get to render the comments with consistency is Acrobat. I don't know what's available for Chromebook, but hopefully others have suggestions that work consistently on that platform.

[kornowsa]

Thank you!  I was thinking that was the case.  I will remain curious and interested to find out if anyone has had any success on Chromebooks.

[ambouche]

This whole discussion brings up a deeper problem:  why is it so difficult and unintuitive for students to be able to see BOTH the written comments AND the in-line annotations we can put directly on the paper, when they go into the Gradebook?  Why does it take a discussion forum and a bunch of work-arounds to even find out how to access this basic function?  If we and our students have to bumble around trying to find out the answer in the morass of user guides and discussion forums that exist for Canvas, then the function isn't working and needs to be fixed. 

I don't know about the rest of you, but my students are not going to spend time trying to figure out how to access my comments and responses;  if they don't see it right there in the gradebook, they aren't going to even know there is a problem.  They will just go away convinced that online learning is a scam.  This is extremely critical because teaching effectiveness is so totally dependent on students receiving feedback.

[kona]

I agree that it should be more "in your face" for students, but what we've found is that until this changes there are some things you can do to improve the chances of students viewing this. Some of these include:

* trainging/orientation before the class starts and have this be a component of the training

* include information about how to view and access annotated comments in the course syllabus and the introduction to the course; maybe even the syllabus quiz

* add a reminder at the bottom of the assignment telling students how to access their feedback

* add a comment in Speedgrader reminding students how to check the annotations on their paper - this comment should get pushed to their default email

* send an email reminder to students after the first couple of assignments reminding them where to go to view all comments and feedback

Hope this helps!

[ambouche]

Thank you! These are good suggestions, and we are already doing all of them except the one about putting it at the bottom of the assignment itself. That's a great idea, and we'll put it on the list to implement, though I'm afraid it will meet the same fate as the other reminders, emails, posted notices etc.

The real challenge in online education, especially with lower-level, naive populations, is getting students to read and act on the information we give them, and to internalize what we tell them well enough to use it consistently.

We have an extensive orientation to train students in course mechanics and policies, and seven big assignments that all follow the same general pattern, and we still have students who by the end of the semester are still making the same mistakes every time.

The only parts of the course that students reliably respond to effectively are the ones that they encounter without having to be told about it in a separate message, because a substantial subset of them don't read - they don't read email, they don't read content, they don't read instructions, announcements or reminders. This is the Achilles heel of the push for online education, because it assumes students read, and a lot of them don't.

This is made much more difficult by the fact that in Canvas, students have a lot of ways to access assignments and assessments directly, bypassing the modules and the front page of the course. A lot of them visualize their course primarily on their phones as a 'to do' list, out of context, so all our announcements and reminders that are in the modules or on the front page are bypassed, as is much of the course content and any activity or assignment that isn't graded and therefore isn't on their Canvas to-do list.

We would be greatly helped if Canvas would give us more power to turn off certain functions that are actually hurting or confusing students or that are making course communications much more difficult.

Anne-Marie Bouché, PhD

Associate Professor, Art History

Contact Information:

Office: Library 452

Phone: 239-590-1467

Fax: 239-590-7270

NOTE: email is usually the quickest way to reach me

Mailing:

Department of Visual & Performing Arts

Florida Gulf Coast University

10501 FGCU Blvd, S.

Fort Myers, FL 33965-6565

Summer mailing (May 5 to August 10)

La Ville Daniou

22490 Langrolay-sur-Rance

France

Phone: (from US) 011-33-296-86-86-39

"Florida has a very broad public records law. As a result, any written communication created or received by Florida Gulf Coast University employees is subject to disclosure to the public and the media, upon request, unless otherwise exempt. Under Florida law, e-mail addresses are public records. If you do not want your email address released in response to a public records request, do not send electronic mail to this entity. Instead, contact this office by phone or in writing."