[ARCHIVED] Why is Canvas now sending assignment comments to Skyward when grades are synced?

[Jen_Charles]

I just had one of our teachers come to me because the comments she had made in Speedgrader showed up in Skyward after she synced the grades. This has never been the case before, and is not necessarily something we want to happen as many of our teachers make multiple comments in Speedgrader. Is this a setting that can be turned off? Was this an announced change? I missed it in release notes if it was. 

Thank you for any help anyone can give!

[señorasharpe]

I wish I had an answer but I don't.  Hoping this "reply" moves your question back to the top!  I agree, it's super frustrating!  

[kirsten_fanning]

I am in the same boat.  We need to know how to disable this feature.

[Jen_Charles]

Canvas reps? Any suggestions or info? Is this happening because of a change on the Canvas end or the Skyward end? Do we know that much? I have had more teachers contacting me about this and it is something that we need to be able to disable or make a choice. These teachers DO NOT want this feature as they use Canvas comments way differently than Skyward comments. 

[Jen_Charles]

@señorasharpe @kirsten_fanning I have also reached out to Skyward to see if by chance this is coming from a change on their end. I'll report in if I hear anything!

[kirsten_fanning]

Thank you!  This is a huge issue in my district and I can't find mention of it in the updates so I just feel helpless.  Even if they could direct me to the update where it was disclosed, it would be helpful.

[daniel_clark1]

Many teachers in my district also want this as an option that they can disable.  Comments on student work need to be seen differently than comments in skyward.

[kirsten_fanning]

We were able to get this corrected though Canvas help and having the chat team escalate to SIS team.  This new "feature" is the default setting for grade passback, but when they upgraded the platform this summer and moved everyone to it, it turned on for us all.  They just need to disable the comments and descriptions from syncing (our assignment instructions were flowing and importing into detailed description as big mess).  This should also help with the amount of time each sync is taking since it reduces the overall data size.  I hope this information helps.  Our grades are due tomorrow so tensions were high over here to get this resolved!

[Jen_Charles]

Awesome!! Was this something the teachers do or did it have to be done at the admin level? Because YES we've been having so many issues with grade passback.

[kirsten_fanning]

I had to do it as Admin.

[Jen_Charles]

Awesome!! Thank you SO MUCH, @kirsten_fanning !!

[Jen_Charles]

@kirsten_fanning Where exactly did you do this? I'm not our admin (I'm a tech integrator), so I need to point them in the right direction. 

[kirsten_fanning]

In Help & Requests there is an option to Chat with Canvas Help.  I went through that because I wanted to talk with a person lol.  I think the option is only visible to Admins.  I had to wait a while, but it was worth it!  Our syncs are happening SO MUCH FASTER! I am really excited for you to get this fixed and let me know if it works better for you as well.

[michelle_cicca1]

Still having trouble with this issue... Is there any way that one of you who has solved it can give a quick step-by-step list of what to do? And who, precisely, has to do it?  person from Canvas Admin? Or a person from our Campus Admin team? or a person from our District Admin team?

HELP! We really need Canvas to stop sending Assignment Descriptions and Speed Grader Comments through to Skyward!

[christina_will2]

How long did it take to get results for the SIS department?  I was on a Chat last Thursday 10/8/20 and the comments and descriptions are still showing in our Skyward Passback.  I tried to look up the ticket number that was assigned to me and I cannot find it in our queue.

Our assignment descriptions look like gibberish since they are full of hyperlinks so you see all the technical data associated with the hyperlink.  My teachers are disliking this function and it is causing a lot of issues with our GradePassback with Skyward.

[christina_will2]

Update:  Canvas turned this feature off for us Friday evening 10/16.  Took a little over a week.  To get the comments and discussions to not show up in Skyward if they have alreay pushed it was advised that we remaster our grades.

[kirsten_fanning]

It was all a big mess when it came across our instances too and I think it has created some grade sync issues that I have tickets in for.  I am the Canvas admin for our district and I had to submit a ticket with Canvas support and have our CSM escalate it to the SIS team to get help.  Once they were working on the ticket, it was almost immediately fixed since they literally just need to flip a switch.  Let me know if you have additional questions, I'm happy to help.

[michelle_cicca1]

Once you had this new push-comments-to-Skyward "feature" turned off, so the Speed Grader comments were no longer pushing through to Skyward, did you notice a change in the Speed Grader comments behavior?

We are now having problems with the comments in Speed Grader going "somewhere" but no longer visible.

In the past, any comments a teacher left in Speed Grader were visible and had the time-date stamp with them, so we could see a chronological list of comments left over time for that specific student on that specific assignment. That is now gone.

Teachers could also delete a comment if it was no longer applicable, or for any other reason (typos, wrong group, etc.). NOW you can click on a download link (picture below) to see a list of all the comments left for that student on that assignment, but you have to go through the extra process of downloading, AND you can no longer delete any comments. Is this the new way that Speed Grader comments will work? Also, why is it working that way for some students and groups but not others? Will student comments also be "sent somewhere" to be accessed only via separate download?

Are there new guidelines detailing how Speed Grader comments will work if we opt NOT to have them all push through to Skyward?