[ARCHIVED] Speed Grader Comments Gone

[vandalenw]

I believe this question was asked  a couple of years ago, but a final solution was never provided. One of our professors uses the comments section of Speed Grader when her students submit online papers. Multiple times and in no particular pattern she has had a comment randomly disappear.  This does not happen all the time, but enough that she has lost valuable time trying to retype her comments.  Many times these are not standardized comments, but unique to each student. What is the solution to this issue? Has anyone else encountered this issue in the last few months?

[igustafson · Accepted solution]

Hello @vandalenw,

I will be happy to help answer this. With this kind of thing, it is helpful to have examples if it does happen in the future. In my experience with comments if they don't save them or hit post comment and move on to the next student it will not be posted and that can cause it to disappear.

[frstrtd1]

This happens to me all the time. I've tried clearing my cache, but to no avail. I type a comment, hit post comment, and receive an error message from 
Canvas saying the comment was deleted. SO frustrating!!! Happens about every 20th comment or so.

[ldavenport4015]

Recently, we've had two reports of this happening to instructors when typing comments into Speedgrader for student assignments. The only solution they have discovered is to log out of Canvas and log back in. 

[jtaves]

This is happening to me right now.  I have screen shot 2 messages, but unable to determine.  I have logged out, turned off computer.  It's been happening over 3 days.  No one can duplicate since it's random.  Contacted Canvas and my institution.  I am no longer using highlighter and putting comments on papers...just using comments submission box.  Frustrating bc students are not getting the feedback I want to give them!   I use chrome.

[lenz]

If you look through the comments, you'll see that this has been going on for over 7 years.  The only work-around I've found is to periodically copy and paste everything into WORD as a back-up.  Which of course I didn't do this evening (early morning, now) while spending hours on final exams that I have to finish so that my grades can be turned in tomorrow. 

Now, I have to do them again.

Actually, my point was that CANVAS has known about and ignored this problem FOR YEARS.  Just to rub a little salt in the wound, the "solution" offered above amounts to "If your comments are gone, then they're gone.  Sorry."

 

[erik_lysbakken]

In my experience, this issue comes up every time a student hands in a submission individually on a group assignment. It looks like the comment just dissappears in Speedgrader, but in reality the comment will be saved and available to the student. You can also find the comments if you check via "Grades", but in speedgrader it looks like they are not saved. 

A workaround for this is to check the "Assign Grades to each student individually" in the assignment setting, but that will create more work when grading the group submissions. 

Again, this is only a issue when a student hands in a assignment individually on a group assignment without being a part of a group. We have been using Canvas since 2017 and this "bug" has unfortunately always been there. 

[ayocom1]

My assignment is a "group optional" assignment. Do you think that if I have everyone in the class sign up for a group (even if the group is just them, if they choose to work solo), that would solve the disappearing comments problem?

This is happening to me now and unfortunately the comments that disappear into the black hole (We can still find them in the PDF) prevent me from being able to click the "Reassign" button. This is really messing up my workflow for giving feedback and requesting edits.

I'll try it in the fall and set myself a reminder to pop back here after this assignment occurs fall term, so I can update everyone on whether that worked.

[erik_lysbakken]

Yes, if every student signs up for a group even if they hand in individually that would solve the issue. This is one of the "workarounds" we use, but there is always someone who forgets to sign up. And FYI: If you decide to use "Self sign up" on the groups, make sure you turn this off before the students actually hand in their assignments.  Believe it or not,  this system actually allows students to join the groups of students who have already submitted in order to download their submission... This is a well known cheating tactic at our university. We solve this by giving the students a due date to sign up to groups, then we close the self sign up before they start handing in their assignments. But this is only a issue if you use self sign up. 

I am really hoping that the "Automate and Streamline group membership" theme will fix all of the issues in the current group system.