Speed Grader Tools Issue

[season]

The Speed Grader highlight and strikethrough tools are causing me much frustration. I am having to click and drag five to ten times every time I try to highlight a word, sentence, or phrase on which I want to comment. The tool simply won't start marking. I know I'm not describing this well, but this is all I have. Possibly related, when I do manage to get it to work, the marks aren't clean; they highlight or strikethrough part of the previous or next word. I have not used Speed Grader in about three years. I did not experience these issues before.

I am trying to mark essays submitted as Word documents. The problem is the same on the four different computers I have tried. Any help would be greatly appreciated. I'm not sure how I am going to make it through the term at this rate since I am wasting so much time trying to get the tools to work.

[kblack]

Hi  @season  Welcome to the Canvas Community, and sorry that you're experiencing such frustration using the SpeedGrader tools.  While they are "acquired touch" to some degree, I have found them pretty reliable, overall.  I was just conducting a Canvas Workshop yesterday for a few faculty--where something is almost always bound to go wrong--and the users were able to try them out just fine.  Your experience may be caused by a few other issues.

First, make absolutely, positively certain that you are using fully updated, supported browsers, as outlined here: Which browsers does Canvas support?  Also, you mentioned that you tried on four different computers, but did you try different browsers?  If you were using Firefox, try Chrome.  If you are on a Mac, try Safari and then Chrome.  Do NOT use the Explorer/Edge family of browsers, even though Edge is officially supported on Windows machines.  Those tend to have the most issues.

I would then suggest checking in with some colleagues in your department/school.  Are they experiencing the same issues as you are?  Check in with the IT support folks at your institution, which appears to be here: Information Technology - Enterprise State Community College .  If you do not have success there, try contacting Canvas support via Help>>Report a Problem within the Canvas interface, which may be forwarded along to your local support first.

While it takes a bit of time to adapt to some of the tools, they should not be causing you this much frustration!  And yes, the service within SpeedGrader did change from three years ago, but (again) they DO work, overall.

I hope this helps a bit, Stephanie.

[season]

Thank you for the reply, Ken. I had attempted your troubleshooting ideas

before I posted, so I have had to get my campus IT to help escalate the

issue with their Canvas representative.

Stephanie Eason

English Instructor

Enterprise State Community College

334-347-2623 ext. 2227

On Fri, Sep 13, 2019 at 6:19 AM kblack@dom.edu <instructure@jiveon.com>

[kblack]

Thanks for the update, Stephanie.  I'll be curious to find out what it was, so feel free to share with the Community what the resolution was.

[nevitt_val]

Stephanie, did you ever solve this? I'm on Chrome and I'm having the exact same issue. 

[season]

No, unfortunately, this was never resolved. After multiple contacts, uploading videos to show what was happening, and a bunch of back-and-forth, Canvas's response was basically, "We know this is an issue for some users, but we don't have a solution." I still have issues with this now. 

I have found that starting just BELOW the word/section I want to mark and moving in an upward direction does occasionally work. Sometimes, I can simply close the SpeedGrader page and reload, but most often I have to completely log out and in again for it to work.

[nevitt_val]

Thanks for the quick reply, I'm glad to hear they admit there is a problem. It is a bit easier when I'm not using the laptop's mousepad - an external mouse works a tiny bit better. Being able to use the highlighting tool seems like such a simple expectation...

[SusanHatch]

I have the same frustrations. I have to repeatedly click on the tool and sitll it won't operate. Oddly enough, I have found if I am hgihlighting text and I go from right to left, rather than left to right, it helps. I wish Canvas would resolve this problem.