Improve instructor awareness of draft submission comments

This idea has been developed and deployed to Canvas

For more information, please read through the  Canvas Release Notes (2022-01-15).


I was updating a Canvas Data report just yesterday which serves to identify the submission comments stuck in the draft state.  To my surprise, there were 682 unsubmitted instructor comments for one of our monthly terms.   I then looked at all three active terms and unfortunately found 1087 comments in the draft state.

I find this most unfortunate and view this as a notable flaw impacting learning.   It is happening as instructors are pressing the ‘next student’ arrow in the SpeedGrader prior to pressing the Submit button below the comment box.  After they enter text and navigate to the next student without submitting, they see this below on the left side of the screen.  It is green and does not stand out much so I think most ignore it or simply do not see it.

draftcomment.png


I believe this needs to be addressed by adding a flag in the gradebook or perhaps an entry on the Instructor To-Do list.  For the gradebook approach, perhaps add an icon to the left side of the cell to draw the instructors attention.  Also, the color of the above notification might be red to indicate an issue.  I might also suggest adding a line or two: 

Your comment was auto-saved as draft.
Your student cannot see your comment.
Return to the prior student and press Submit to post the comment.

 

 

Thanks for reading!

 

ps. related items - 

https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Idea-Conversations/Replace-tiny-asterisk-with-quot-DRAFT-quot-for... 

https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Idea-Conversations/Report-for-comments-in-draft-state/idc-p/44386... 

12 Comments
Stef_retired
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni
Status changed to: Open

@Jeff_F 

Thanks for sharing this idea, and in particular thank you for including the links to related conversations. Members might also be interested in checking out Allow Teachers to Enable/Disable Draft Comments in... - Canvas Community 

Stef_retired
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni
Status changed to: In Development
 
kbuckl
Community Member

Our program has run into this issue several times, where an instructor thought they submitted feedback and the students never saw it. Fixing it would make for a better learning experience for students. Thanks!

adam_zolkover
Community Participant

I know I'm late to this, but addressing the draft comment issue would make a huge positive difference in our courses. The tiny red asterisk with no explanation doesn't really help instructors know when they haven't submitted a comment on student work. And often, we don't find out there's a problem until a student contacts us to let us know they haven't received feedback.

This seems like it could have a lot of impact without a lot of effort.

GinaReiss
Community Novice

This makes a lot of sense, I myself have had to return to grading to hit submit, as important comments were not submitted!

Stef_retired
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni
Status changed to: On Beta
 
Stef_retired
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni
  Comments from Instructure

Graders are notified about unposted comments. This change notifies graders if a comment has been created but not posted.

For more information, please read through the  Canvas Release Notes (2022-01-15).

Jeff_F
Community Coach
Community Coach
Author

THANK YOU DEVELOPERS!!!

This feature looks great and is exactly what was missing. 

Take a bow.

ClappingClapping

adam_zolkover
Community Participant

I second @Jeff_F's comment. Thank you so much for addressing this!

KristinL
Community Team
Community Team
Status changed to: Completed
Comments from Instructure

 

For more information, please read through the Canvas Release Notes (2022-01-15)