Notify Students When DocViewer Annotations Have Been Left By a Teacher

[khaus]

I give my students detailed feedback on their essays using the DocViewer annotations. However, many of my students never see my feedback because they are not alerted when I leave annotations. When I leave a comment, it shows a small dialogue box next to the assignment in the grade book, but there is nothing that alerts them to annotations. It's impractical to rely on students to click on the assignment, click submission details, and then click view feedback when they have no way of knowing if feedback has even been left. 

This idea has been developed and deployed to Canvas

For details, please read through the Ready Release Notes (2020-04-25) .

[bcalnan]

I think it would be great to include a new icon to indicate the existence of annotation based feedback in the Student View. This would prompt students to check their submissions and then click on "View Feedback" more consistently.

[cathi_miller]

I agree with Kelly.  I would add a top level button that says View Teacher Feedback.  If students had to click on the feedback and leave a reply for the teacher before they could see their grade, that would increase interaction. I would love to Beta test that.

[Stef_retired]

Comments from Instructure

This feature has been developed and is now available in Canvas. For more information, please read through the Ready Release Notes (2020-04-25) 

Thanks to everyone who has contributed to the conversation. Your investment has helped refine a feature that is now part of Canvas.

[connor]

I think there is a way to do it, as I was able to have it working in the past, but not anymore. Even if there is a way, it would be hard to get everyone to turn them on--plus notifications can be funny.

One of my teachers sometimes leaves annotations. When she does, she writes in her comment "see comments on the doc" so I know to check. I think this is the best bet until there's a surefire way.