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
KristinL
Community Team
Community Team
Status changed to: New
 
KristinL
Community Team
Community Team
Status changed to: Completed