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
Renee_Carney
Community Team
Community Team
  Idea is currently in Product Radar Learn more about this stage...

jbrown
Community Participant

I'd be very interested in seeing this addressed. As an instructional designer supporting faculty, I see this issue frequently. A student submits a document, the instructor grades it with the rubric and lengthy comments via the Crocodoc tool, the student resubmits a new version before seeing the instructor's comments, and whalah! The student has no way of seeing all that work the instructor put into giving feedback to the student. I like the idea of the submissions being visible more like a "stream" on the right side rather than via a pull-down which people often don't notice. Also, there must be a way to alert or prevent students from resubmitting work once grading the original submission has commenced.

ibagdasa
Community Participant

It is a little disappointing to see that this issue hasn't been addressed since 2015 because it is very important for students to be able to see the previous instructor's comments and annotations on their previous submissions for the same assignment. Just today, we ran into  this situation when both the instructor and student got very frustrated because they saw the different available options in Speed Grader: the instructor assumed that the student is able to access his previous submissions from the drop-down list, and student couldn't understand what the instructor is talking about when asking him to access his submission from the previous date. Instructor's feedback is a valuable teaching and learning tool and this issue should be addressed much sooner. I hope Instructure will move the priority of this request up.

The student has to have the access to the previous submission through the drop-down list (the same as an instructor). They should be able to access Crocodoc view from Grades and from the Assignment link. They could have the links to previous submissions along with dates of submission listed in the Submission box above the comments. 

Thank you.

brendaa
Community Contributor

Great, I'm glad to see this is at least on the product radar! This issue is very confusing for instructors and students.  Since there is no way to prevent new submissions once an instructor has started grading the current submission, instructors grade what they think is current, not realizing a student is submitting a new version.  Then the student is very confused because they don't see the instructor comments.

DrNufer
Community Coach
Community Coach

I was just made aware of this thread.  I have been teaching in Canvas since 2013 and only just now realized that students are only able to review their most recent submission when they submit multiple times.  :S  It would be very valuable for them to be able to see each submission.  For thesis and dissertation students, it may be vital for students to submit multiple times and receive/incorporate feedback for each interaction.  Creating a unique assignment for every submission might be a bit of work for our professors.  Ideally it would be great if students had a similar function as faculty whereas they can review multiple submissions with timestamps and feedback.

moja
Community Novice

It would be nice if students even had a confirmation that their submission was received.  They don't get anything after they post, I guess.  I would like to see the submission history for each assignment on the page for that assignment.

Stef_retired
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni

 @moja ‌, if you're referring specifically to assignment submissions, you might be interested in adding your feedback and vote to this feature idea that's currently on Product Radar: https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/3455-e-mail-confirmation-upon-assignment-submission 

MsTia
Community Participant

I just became aware of this thread.  Only TODAY, after two years of using Canvas, did I realize students cannot see my Assignment Comments or annotations for previous submissions.  I'm floored!  I had no idea my feedback on previous drafts was unavailable to students, because I can easily see both Assignment Comments and CrocoDoc annotations on my end.  This access is especially important for those students who are most likely to re-submit an assignment.  I'm grateful to the student who took the time to spell it out for me today, or I would have continued in the dark.  For me, this would be a higher priority "fix" or feature than anything else I've voted on here.  Students should have the very same sort of drop-down that instructors have, so they can see prior feedback.

nja5105
Community Novice

From a students perspective this can be very troublesome and confusing, especially in cases where a single assignment may have multiple parts with different deadlines. For my one of my System Analysis course projects I looked into this suggestion and would like to provide a sample mockup i created that might benefit to the idea. 

(pardon the typo's in the note, it was my first draft!)

Displayed is a sample view from Penn State

janet_morton
Community Novice

It says at the top that voting opened and closed in 2015, but a feature like this would be incredibly helpful for when students write essays.