Making feedback more visible to students

This idea has been developed and deployed to Canvas

For more information, please read through the  Canvas Release Notes (2021-11-20).


I'm teaching a course using Canvas. This is the second semester I've used it. I like Canvas overall, but I've discovered that my students have a difficult time reading the feedback that I provide on their online assignment submissions because the feedback is split into three different locations, and when student view an assignment that I've graded, there is no visual indication of whether feedback is present, and no unified display of that feedback. I'd like the feedback to be visible by default, or else some kind of visually loud indicator present to show them there is feedback. Let me explain:

 

  1. Say I grade an assignment that a student submitted. They go to the assignment, and can see straight-away a general comment on the lower right-hand side. That's visible by default. Fine and good.
  2. But what about all the comments embedded in the document view? Those are not automatically displayed, and there is no marker to show that such comments have been embedded in the document. There should be at minimum a big icon saying feedback is embedded, for sure, so go look at it. Currently, "View Feedback" link is always present, regardless of whether feedback has been embedded or not.
  3. Furthermore, the rubric grade is displayed in the upper-right corner, but the detailed rubric view is hidden until students think to click "Show Rubric"... yet even then, the written feedback that I have provided on each rubric criteria remains hidden from view! Students have to hunt for that feedback by clicking the easily-overlooked speech-bubble icon one-at-a-time for each criterion. But I don't necessarily write a comment for each criterion, and there is no visual sign or indication that a comment has been written or not.

 

How are students supposed to know and remember to check all of these various locations to receive the complete set of feedback provided by their instructors? It is utterly inefficient and defeatist because students don't seem to realize that all this feedback is sitting there waiting for them--and they don't know to look for it.

 

Now, from a student point of view, I don't want to have to click in so many different places to hunt (perhaps fruitlessly) for feedback that my instructor might or might not have left for me (since there is no indicator signalling the existence of written comments).

 

The fact that written feedback has been given within the submitted file and within the rubric should be foregrounded--it should be made highly visible to the students checking their grades. That feedback is part of the learning process. It is essential for students to read that feedback in order to improve their work. If they don't know it is there, what is the point?

 

Don't force users to guess and hunt for feedback. They won't do it. Make it obvious that the feedback has been given by putting some kind of big symbol or message next to the assignment doc (or by displaying the assignment by default so students can see that margin comments etc have been embedded in the file) and also by automatically displaying the rubric WITH the written feedback already visible. Don't make the students click in three hundred different places to get all their feedback for a single assignment. Please.

194 Comments
ameyer4
Community Novice

Rubrics need a breakdown for each rating, not just a description for the criteria.  Students like to earn an A, as well as be able to understand why they earned a different rating.

colleen_harmon
Community Participant

I landed here again while searching for something else and thought I'd add another suggestion since the topic is still open.

As an interim solution for difficult-to-find feedback until (or if) there's a design remodel, how about linking all the feedback channels to one aggregate feedback page? Each feedback statement could be hyperlinked back to its source (in the rubric, peer, or teacher input panels) if the student (or teacher) wants to see it there, though I can't imagine why they would. Meanwhile, there's a nice roll-up summary page that shows all the feedback for that particular assignment, each noted regarding its source. The input areas for feedback would remain the same. There'd just be this additional page that displays all the feedback together for that assignment. Maybe it could open up in a "half" page side-by-side with the assignment, so the student and teacher can compare the feedback with the assignment without clicking around.

Colleen

nuvlg721
Community Participant

Just a note - I'm not sure what the "under consideration" status connotes, but I really, really hope that Instructure will address this issue. We have faculty who are willing to try SpeedGrader, but get discouraged when students don't see the feedback that they've spent so much time creating for the students. Then they stop using SpeedGrader entirely. Help us help them!

Renee_Carney
Community Team
Community Team

Feature Ideas Stages:  How does the voting process work for feature ideas?

Under Consideration

Ideas we like and have moved into long term planning.  Because some projects are complicated and require many hours of labor and prerequisite development, an idea may stay in the Under Consideration stage for 6-18 months before receiving an update and moving to another stage.

jhurley
Community Novice

Renee, Thank you for the update. As I'm sure you can see, this is a huge area of concern for those of us who would like to use Canvas to grade our students' written work. I (and many others) have gone back to grading the "old school" way because we can't ensure that students are able to see our feedback. Speedgrader offers a lot of potential, but it is completely unworkable in its current form. Please continue to keep us updated.

lisahistory
Community Novice

It does seem useless to me to go to all the trouble to create a rubric, but they need to click again to see the comments. That rubric text is my grade, the rubric text. The number is not the point for how I grade.

dejonghed07
Community Champion

I agree that feedback placed in Canvas is not student-centered. Students are required to click multiple times to view feedback in 3 different locations. They may not even know that annotated Crocodoc feedback is available. They should be able to view all of the feedback for an assignment on one screen. Instructors may assume that students are viewing annotated Crocodoc feedback when students do not even know it is available by clicking a "View Feedback" link in the upper right corner.

If instructors use Crocodoc, it may help to send students these resources:

However, students deserve a user-friendly interface that does not to require them to read and view the above resources to figure out how to access their assignment feedback.

jhurley
Community Novice

Thanks, Denise. I have been trying for a year or so to get Canvas to make the feedback placement more student friendly, but for whatever reason there has been no movement on this issue. Spread the word!

Jennifer Hurley

Associate Professor of English

Ohlone College – Newark Campus

dejonghed07
Community Champion

Will do! Thanks for your thorough description of the problems. I don't understand why this is not considered high priority when feedback is critical to student learning. What strategies do you take to ensure students receive your feedback?

jhurley
Community Novice

Denise,

Canvas makes changes based on the number of votes an idea receives, so the only way to make change is to spread the word and get a lot votes for an idea. Canvas doesn’t seem to make changes simply based on the fact that something is a good idea, which is frustrating. One would hope that they would want to improve the system to help us and to help students.

The only way I’ve found to help students find the feedback is to show it to them by showing an example on the screen, using the test student.

Jennifer Hurley

Associate Professor of English

Ohlone College – Newark Campus