Student view: View submissions and comments for all submissions

This idea has been developed and deployed to Canvas

 
Right now students can only view their most recently added submission to an assignment. This means that all previous submissions to the assignment are not available to students, including feedback that the instructors have provided. This is a big problem because students are losing critical information that could help promote learning and understanding.We need to eliminate this lossylearning problem and make all assignment submissions visible to students!
193 Comments
tobe_baeyens
Community Contributor

The assignment tool is probably the most valuable tool for teachers that want to make a transfer to student centered learning. The teacher should think about the assignment outcomes first, create the assignment, and add the outcomes as a rubric to this final assignment. Students should be able to submit this assignment whenever they need feedback. The teacher can look at these submissions and offer guidance. A full learning journal would emerge, but because it's just accessible to the teacher, the journal is not a learning tool. Everything the teacher does is lost if a student resubmits. Please sort this out as soon as possible.

ldraper2
Community Novice

I totally agree!  Most instructors don't know students cannot view previous assignment submission uploads (unless students have told them) and if they provide feedback to the student on their original assignment submission, the student can't view it and doesn't even know the feedback is there.  We need this change!

cmccar
Community Novice

In writing classes, process is critical. It is imperative that students view instructor feedback on the multiple submissions for one assignment. As a writing teacher, I view the assignment, make extensive comments, and then the student is able to read the comments, revise her paper, and submit it again for me to review. Once the student submits the new file, the old file disappears from her gradebook, and the View Feedback feature also goes away for an old submission. 

cmccar
Community Novice

Yes, I just learned that students cannot see my comments from previous drafts. Unacceptable!

bascott
Community Novice

Same here! So frustrating.

2629988
Community Novice

I've had two cases where not having this feature became a real problem: In one case, I had to peer review someone else's assignment, but the guy had accidentally submitted his own peer review as new version of the assignment. Thus, it was impossible to peer review his paper. In a more recent case (the reason why I write here), our group handed in two almost identical files. We then commented on the submission to tell the teachers what happened, but as a result we now only have an empty document shown as submission.

kperez108
Community Novice

I just had a student literally freak out because we could not see a previous version of the work and assumed a zero was the final grade. The student submitted a paper that needed citation work and until it was corrected, the grade stood as Zero. When the student resubmitted their assignment, it still showed a zero because it shows the new submission as the final grade and only submission. The student showed the work to another professor hoping to find out why I would give a zero on the resubmission AND emailed this to me: (shared with permission) 

Why did I get a 0 again?? 

I am so confused I did a lot of research I spend a long time doing that work, I have to research ever work from Michelangelo, every image, every info, I did a whole essay at the beginning, I deserve to get a new feedback on my second attempt to know what is going on professor. Please.
I never got a 0 in my life and I can’t afford to get one.
I never did a cover letter before, is it because I add images to it? You said we could add images to the Syllabus and you also said that I could re-do the assignment to upgrade my grades. I showed my work to another professor and she said it was above excellent. Why did I get another 0?
Please let me know because I am going crazy here.
I work full time and I am also doing 5 classes.
Besides all the stress that I already have in my life. 
Don’t do this to me. Please don’t give me a 0 without any feedback this is not fair I deserve to know where I made mistakes so I won’t do them again. I did a work with 28 pages. I never did so many research for any class before. Please please please I beg you, reply this email with a proper explanation of what’s going on. Please.

Two things are happening:

1) If students submit an assignment, I will annotate the assignment with my feedback using the tools Canvas gives us BUT they can only see those remarks if you click "View Feedback' from inside the Canvas portal. Also, this only happens when you click 'View Submission Details' first. If students download the assignment to their computer, all my feedback is removed. (I saw the workaround link in another but wow!)

2) If students submit an assignment and then resubmit the assignment again, it will completely override the first submission but students won't see a pending grade for the second submission, only the first grade posted. This makes students think the original grade is the second grade. When, in fact, I have not even seen the second submission yet to grade it. That makes the student think the resubmission is still wrong.

The anxiety caused by this system is completely unnecessary! The student could have easily seen the 1st submission as a zero and the second submission as a pending a new grade. I saw this thread was started in 2015 - three years ago.... This is completely unacceptable. I'm SHOCKED this is still a thing!!

dianepbh
Community Participant

Can I vote this up 100 times?? Learning is about seeing growth, seeing comments on work, working on the work again with the comments IN PLACE. Imagine is at work, each time you submitted something you did not get to see the work you did before?! This has been on the "radar far too long and the impact on the students is daily.  #product radar#gradebookhistory##grades‌ #gradesmissing

adam_engel
Community Participant

Faculty are asking for this feature. Everyone above makes a pretty clear case for why students being able to view feedback from prior submissions is necessary. Why's it taking so long?

marthazumack
Community Contributor

Agreed. Our students need this far more urgently than a new quiz engine!