Making feedback more visible to students

[dfdimatt]

This idea has been developed and deployed to Canvas

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

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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.

[jhurley]

Renee,

I am just checking in with you about the status of this idea. There are many of us who are waiting for improvements on how students can view their essay feedback, and we're not hearing anything reassuring from Canvas.

It's incredibly frustrating for teachers to make detailed comments and never know if our students can find them. Canvas's lack of responsiveness on this issue is worrisome.

Jennifer Hurley

Associate Professor of English

Ohlone College

Fremont, CA

[cmitchell]

At the very least, the Crocodoc display should come up when they click on the icon under Grades.  For the life of me, I can't imagine why that would take an additional click.  Even then, it comes up in a smallish window.  Why have such a robust feature if you're going to hide it?  The rubric is a rudimentary summary that doesn't come close to the details provided in Crocodoc.  If you have to walk students through a lengthy process of finding feedback, it 's a serious problem.

[SethBattis]

Rumor has it that students should be getting a Speed Grader-like view. Totally unclear on the timeline though… It's been "coming soon" for over a year.

[dustin_tower]

I COMPLETELY agree with the original post. I'm certain that many others have expressed this, but I don't imagine it would be too entirely difficult for the Crocodoc "View Feedback" link to open up into a bigger window at least. It is VERY difficult for students to see the comments on the Speedgrader. I like using the Speedgrader, and this is why this is so frustrating. If Turnitin or another outside app weren't so clunky, I'd switch to using some other way to present feedback. Please make the student's view of feedback as easy to read as it is for the instructor to write.

[jhurley]

I agree, Dustin! I was working with a student the other day, and the Speedgrader feedback was impossible to see on his student version, even on a normal-sized laptop. We kept having to scroll over to the side to see the marginal comment, which made it impossible to see the text that the comment was referring to. Eventually I just gave up and pulled up the student’s essay using my version, which is very easy to see.

Canvas, when will you make this simple change of making the student view of Crocodoc feedback as easy to see as the instructor’s view?

Jennifer Hurley

Associate Professor of English

Ohlone College – Newark Campus

[Renee_Carney]

This idea was moved from Under Consideration stage (no longer in use) to the Product Radar stage.  

This change was made as part of a feature idea process evolution.  Find more information, and contribute insights, by joining Focus Group: DRAFT Feature Idea Space. 

[dpell]

I agree with the points raised above.  I work with ESL learners, for whom both the electronic format of the course and the language used ("rubric") are unfamiliar.  The student view should be at least as user-friendly as the teacher view.

I also want to make sure that a second problem is addressed at the same time.  In the Teachers View the comments and feedback appear in a large, easy to read window.  In the students' view, they appear in a smaller box which can be resized and moved around inside a large grey frame-area.  Resizing does not always work efficiently and sometimes the box refuses to stay in a fixed place and follows the mouse around.  But more to the point, there is really no advantage or reason why a student might want to shrink down the view to see the background box behind.  In the teachers view the comments are always fixed to the size of the frame -- it should be the same in the students' view.  

This video makes the problem very obvious:

https://screencast.com/t/AxDFPmlcui1

If I were using Crocodoc and making comments, but had to deal with it as the students do, I would just simply never even touch the comment feature.  But since it works so well for teachers, it should work even better for the students: their learning depends on reading and processing feedback.

Surely the code for fixing this problem already exists (in the teachers view), so solving it for students should not be difficult.

[dpell]

Can I also add that the ultimate customer for both Infrastructure and all of us as teachers is the students.  Ergo the top priority in debugging and developing this tool should be to improve their experience with the product.

[dpell]

Last question: why does it still say this is closed for voting, when I just voted on it, added comments, and also shared it with my colleagues who are also concerned?  If we can still vote, take away that deadline, because I would not have bothered had Canvas support not specifically told me to do so.

[jhurley]

Hi Daniel,

Thanks for your comments, and I loved your video. It shows so clearly why the student view is inadequate. I have completely given up on using Crocodoc for comments for this very reason. I actually went back to paper comments because at least I knew my students could see them. 

I have been working actively since 2015 to try to get Canvas to improve this feature. I argued to my college that we needed to switch to Canvas, but now I am regretting it. I am shocked by how unresponsive Canvas has been on this issue, when it is one that impacts students most of all.