Is there a way to format comments in speed grader?

[choms001]

I'd like to create bullet paragraphs (or bold or italicize or tab, etc.) when adding a comment on an assignment in SpeedGrader.  I don't see any menu of formatting options and wonder whether any keyboard shortcuts for formatting exist.

[kona · Accepted solution]

 @choms001 , greetings! No, unfortunately, there isn't. What I end up doing is space down a line and then put the number in parentheses like this (1) blah, blah (2) blah, blah... etc... This seems to draw there eye to my main points.

Kona

[SusanNiemeyer · Accepted solution]

@danaleeling  I'm with you on this one. I really wish the Speedgrader Comments would keep the spacing. It would really help my students clearly understand the main points of my feedback. Right now, all they get is a WALL OF TEXT. That cannot be considered "best practices."

[kona · Accepted solution]

 @choms001 , greetings! No, unfortunately, there isn't. What I end up doing is space down a line and then put the number in parentheses like this (1) blah, blah (2) blah, blah... etc... This seems to draw there eye to my main points.

Kona

[danaleeling]

I have learned that the comments dialog box strips out return characters, so "spacing down a line" doesn't generate the paragraph breaks that would help with long comments.  This stripping out is true for both a line feed and for line feed with a carriage return (shift-return and return). Anyone know a way to force line feed that does not get stripped out?

[SusanNiemeyer · Accepted solution]

@danaleeling  I'm with you on this one. I really wish the Speedgrader Comments would keep the spacing. It would really help my students clearly understand the main points of my feedback. Right now, all they get is a WALL OF TEXT. That cannot be considered "best practices."

[danaleeling · Accepted solution]

While not a solution per se, curiously enough there is a Submission Details screen students can access that does show the line breaks entered by the faculty member. Navigation to the Submission Details screen is not obvious, a student stumbled into this and showed me. The key is for the student to access their assignment from the List View of their Dashboard, a view not available to faculty. Accessing prior submissions from the List View takes the students to a different place than the Recent Feedback links seen in the default Card View. I know this sounds confusing so I put screenshots from a student's screen into an article at:

http://danaleeling.blogspot.com/2022/02/canvas-submission-details-screen.html

I later discovered that faculty can also navigate to the Submission Details screen. Getting to that screen involves a different circuitous path that starts from the desktop interface Inbox set to view Submission Comments. Because this is also not an obvious or typical path by which to navigate to a submission (most faculty work from SpeedGrader which has no link that I know of to this other view), I wrote another article on the faculty path to the Submission Details screen.

http://danaleeling.blogspot.com/2022/03/instructor-access-to-canvas-submission.html

That Submission Details screen does display the line breaks.

There is open idea conversation one can "star" for the addition of a rich text editor to the SpeedGrader Comments.

https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Idea-Conversations/Rich-Text-Editor-in-Speedgrader-Comments/idi-p...

This feature request dates back to at least 2015. I suspect that adding a full RCE to the comments presents coding and storage challenges for the engineering teams. I believe there are, however, code plug-ins that might allow the display of markdown text with formatting in Speedgrader comments. This would avoid having to change the storage format for the SpeedGrader comments to accommodate full rich text capabilities. Markdown uses pairs of symbols such as pairs of asterisks to mark **bold** text while retaining plain text storage. This might be a "lower hanging fruit" for the engineering teams.

[Ron_Bowman]

@danaleeling -

Thanks for the articles.  I just looked at that information and it is quite useful. I will point out the easiest way for students to see the comments is to do it the way you outlined for Faculty.  Just go to the view submission comments in the inbox and select the assignment.  it pulls up the formatted comments and it has the link at the top to go to the submission details page.

Much quicker and easier (my opinion) than the other method.

Ron

[alemosri]

This is very frustrating... It actually drives me to use an external way to deliver better comments to students (i.e. Google drive) which seems to defeat the use of Canvas for marking...

I suspect this is a feature that needs a little bit more thought as allowing html mark up, escaped characters or any other simple solutions could open security vulnerabilities when validating input, and also having a fully fledged html editor embedded within speedgrader might be a little too expensive to implement... who knows, but it is sorely needed.

[GERuff]

To further emphasize the importance of this question -

Often I am commenting to my students concerning the necessity of correct formatting of titles (artworks, publications) - yet I can't correctly format the titles in my comments. Not particularly helpful or professional. 

I notice that I am able to format my comments in this forum... Hmmm.

[CC_Chapman]

I was sad to discover this today after giving students pages of feedback on a marketing pitch how bad the formatting looked. I had no idea it was this way, so I'm glad my students showed me.

Hopefully, the team is reading this and understands how important it is to give detailed feedback in a way that students can easily read. 

[tskraft]

It would be nice to see development in response to such fundamental issues such as this one. Like many posts here, I see that this originally was raised in 2019. Are there any cases of Canvas actually responding to issues posted here, or is there another channel where issues have to be raised to see any kind of response? 

[Chris_Hofer]

@tskraft ...

With the recently revised Ideas and Themes space here in the Canvas Community (which used to be formerly referred to as Feature Ideas), there is a theme that has been identified as:

Improve the inbox functionality to provide for mor... - Instructure Community (canvaslms.com)

One of the "Referenced Ideas" on that page is:

[Speedgrader] Rich Text Editor in Speedgrader Comm... - Instructure Community (canvaslms.com)

(this was a linked idea that @danaleeling had referenced in his above reply)

I'm not sure if this idea would meet the needs of what you are looking for in the Canvas LMS, but you might want to follow both links I've provided so that you can stay updated on these topics.

This link details when our submitted ideas are open for voting:

How do Ideas and Themes work in the Instructure Co... - Instructure Community (canvaslms.com)

Hopefully this information will help you in some way.  Sing out if you have any other questions about this...thanks!

[tskraft]

@Chris_Hofer Following your links it appears as though this particular "theme" was opened quite a long time ago: "Submitted by CommunityTeam on ‎04-14-2015 10:35 AM"

I hope you can appreciate that it is a bit frustrating to be told to follow links to stay updated on a feature request that was created 8 years ago and has seemingly received a lot of support since.

[Chris_Hofer]

@tskraft ...

I get it...I really do.  I've submitted my own ideas here in the Community over the past several years...some of which I've thought would be really helpful for many Canvas users...but they have not yet been developed.  It's tough to wait...I agree.  Unfortunately, Instructure (the folks that make Canvas) do have a budget (like many other companies), and they have a set amount of resources they can utilize.  It would be awesome if they could develop "all the things", but that's just not reality.

The idea I had linked to (the one that was first submitted in 2015) is part of the larger theme...which I also linked to above.  Again, I would encourage you to read through all the links I provided...especially the document that describes how themes are identified and when voting is open for Community members.  This is just one of the ways that Instructure gathers feedback from us...the end users.

If you are curious, here is the Canvas Product Roadmap - Instructure Community (canvaslms.com) which was just recently updated by Instructure.

I hope this helps to clarify things for you.  Take care...be well.