[SpeedGrader] Allow HTML in Assignment Comments

Status: Open Submitted by on ‎01-08-2016 12:15 PM
In providing feedback to students in the Assignment Comments area of an assignment, I often provide URLs to students.  Currently, the comments area is text only so students cannot click on the URL to go to the website.  Instead, they need to manually copy and paste the URL to make it work.  It would be nice to have some HTML functionality here.
58 Comments
michelle_suttle
Community Novice
‎03-23-2016 09:06 PM

I think this would break up the monotony of typical feedback.

kona
Community Coach
Community Coach
‎03-24-2016 08:24 AM

I've been doing a ton of assignment comments over the break and agree that this feature would be much appreciated. It would be nice to have a bulleted or numbered list, bold, italics, underline, etc. All things that would help me to emphasize certain information to students.

jsparks
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni
‎03-24-2016 09:02 AM

We will consider this for a future update. The team is currently focusing on the Canvas Studio: Modern Quizzing Engine​. We will look for enhance this functionality for assignments in the future.

Kind regards,

Jason

ronmarx
Community Contributor
‎07-06-2016 10:50 AM

Please vote for Commenting in HTML code too. It's related to this idea, and would save the many Canvas users who tweak the underlying HTML keep their sanity. (Plus, it's a great learning tool for new developers coming on board to teams.)

Thank you,  @ronmarx ​

BethCrook
Community Coach
Community Coach
‎09-16-2016 09:30 AM

Just had a History & Humanities instructor request the need to italicize book titles in their speedgrader comments.  So here's my late +1 vote!  

ronmarx
Community Contributor
‎09-17-2016 03:39 PM

Please vote for Commenting in HTML code too. It's related to this idea, and would save the many Canvas users who tweak the underlying HTML keep their sanity. (Plus, it's a great learning tool for new developers coming on board to teams.)

Renee_Carney
Community Team
Community Team
‎11-01-2016 09:48 AM
  Idea is currently in Product Radar Learn more about this stage...

kurt_friedrich
Community Novice
‎04-21-2017 07:12 PM

Probably the most used, and best vehicle for me to correct my students incorrect thinking is when I correct their homework and give them feedback.  I would be happy if I could just use Bold and Italic until we get to HTML

thanks

sarah_boutin
Community Novice
‎09-15-2017 10:51 AM

HTML capability in feedback is a must have for today's high school students. When I need to leave specific feedback I can either leave a 200+ word entry or post a link to a video that shows my students how to improve. Which of the 2 do you think most students would learn more from and implement going forward? Smiley Happy

jblumberg
Community Contributor
‎10-01-2017 06:34 PM

I am migrating a different feature request that I started into this request because as  @James  points out it overlaps significantly.  I am leaving in a few issues that are slightly tangientle to html in messaging because I believe they fundamentally overlap.

The messaging and comments tool strips whitespace and does allow html.  This was probably designed to make txt messaging more effective.  In practice it is unhelpful and leads to confusion.  In addition the text messages sent are ineffective and useless.

 

Problems with the current system:

  • The amount of the text included in text messages currently is so short that it is worthless.  An example of a text message I recently received (the text message cut-off exactly as I include it below):

(Canvas Alert) Student Full Name (Course Full Title) just sent you a message in Canvas

Hi Professor Blumberg, I can

  • There is no link back to Canvas from text messages and the full message is cutoff 
  • It appears like Canvas text notifications are limited to either 140 or 160 characters.  Now most phones/carriers can automatically split and combine larger text messages (up to 6 times this size).  This may result in greater SMS charges in some rare situations, though these situations are now fairly rare as most US based cell phone plans (and probably most international now as well) come with unlimited txt messaging.
  • When including any programming code in a message or comment, all whitespace is stripped, making the code difficult to read.  This makes comments in programming courses very difficult.  This does not save much space but it makes the comments hard to read (even for non-programming topics)
  • Allow html formatting in messages.  I believe the only reason formatting wasn't included is to support text messages.  

 

Suggestions:

 

1.  Allow html in messages, simply use the normal wysiwyg editor

2. When sending a text notification for a message, if the message includes html then send:

Student Full Name (Course short code) sent you a message in Canvas

hyperlink back to Canvas (could launch mobile app or link to page in browser)

If the message doesn't include html then send:

Student Full Name sent you a message in Canvas

Text of message either in full or partial based on notification settings

 

Since the notification is from notifications@instructure.com it is obvious that it is from Canvas.

 

2.  Allow users to set whether they want abridged or longer text notifications in the their personal settings.  Admins would be able to set the default behavior at the sub-account level.  There would probably still need to be a maximum size but it could be much larger (maybe 1600 characters).

 

3.  Include whitespace in messaging.  This is an easy change and would make it much easier to format feedback to students.