Unsubmitted Instructor Comments

[Jeff_F]

Hello - will this project be addressing the notable issue with draft/ unsubmitted instructor comments?

To quote myself:

"I'll go out on a limb here to suggest that all have an issue with draft comments; i.e. unsubmitted instructor feedback. I make this claim as my institution is about half way into the summer term and we have over 1,300 unsubmitted comments. I am able to detect these via Canvas Data. This is not a one time situation as I've observed this for several terms. This is a *big* issue as these unsubmitted comments represent missed learning opportunities."

And two of our recently completed monthly terms had in excess of 1,200 unsubmitted instructor comments, and that is with an outreach program with the instructors being notified of the issue. 

My prior posts on this topic:

• https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Idea-Conversations/Improve-instructor-awareness-of-draft-submissi...
• https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Canvas-Developers-Group/Big-Problem-with-unsubmitted-draft-commen...

While it may be 'working as intended' per Canvas Support (Case #08136902), my take is the interface is flawed and is thus creating the issue.  See the links above for a few ideas on addressing this.

Thanks, Jeff

[Jeff_F]

@jsailor  - please see the issue and question in the post.  TY!

[abbyrosensweig]

Really good info, @Jeff_F , thanks for posting and bringing this issue back up in this group.

[jsailor · Accepted solution]

Hi, @Jeff_F,

Yes, my team will be addressing this issue. We have been working on a solution to ensure that instructors are aware that they are leaving their comments in a draft format when moving from one student to another in SpeedGrader without first submitting their comment. 

We plan to have this solution in place with our beta release this month and in production with the January production release. You can watch our release notes for more information on this added functionality, but to provide some advance notice of what to expect, we will show a modal when the instructor moves to the next student without submitting their comment. As you mentioned, we need to make this message much more noticeable to ensure that instructors are not just missing the notification. Instructors will have the option to proceed without submitting should that be what they planned to do or they can submit their comment. 

We also have some additional enhancements planned for providing and viewing feedback. With that work, we plan to adjust the way in which drafts are presented to make it more obvious to a user that their comments are still in draft form as well.   

[Jeff_F]

Good news, indeed ~!

Just to confirm, this pending fix will be part of the new Assignment Enhancements feature option workflow only, or will it also apply to the existing system we are using today with Assignment Enhancements not enabled? 

That info will be useful for our planning.

@jsailor 

[jsailor]

This change will be in effect for all, not tied to the assignment enhancements only, @Jeff_F.  

[sharon_kitching]

Just in time for Christmas!