Why is the "hide grades & comments" feature so confusing?

[Mike71]

I tick boxes, I see an eyeball icon crossed off, I set "options" on a quiz and STILL I have some students who see partial comments or all comments to an assignment. Then I find out that past comments and grades are blocked by one method (in one location) and that pre-blocking is in another location. Altogether I can cite three separate locations (interfaces) in Canvas where there are options for some kind of blocking. 

Why all this confusion in Canvas for something that in Schoology was so simple?

Here is the answer:

Canvas does not believe I should hide grades and comments from students and so it makes the process difficult. 

Here's a Canvas quote:

"The Hide Grades feature should only be used to temporarily hide grades and comments from student view while grading is in progress. It should not be used to conceal grades for longer than reasonably necessary."

It's one thing for a user interface to be confusing. It's another thing to find out that the confusion is intended because someone at Canvas doesn't think I should hide grades and comments. In short, Canvas does not trust my judgment and, therefore, has sought to limit my discretion.

This paternalistic attitude is disconcerting to say the least. And, it is enough to motivate me to volunteer for the committee that reviews our District's subscription to Canvas. 

My other motivation to serve on the committee is the Canvas decision to default to a cartoonish font. 

[Gabriel33 · Accepted solution]

I agree it is somewhat confusing. My guess is that some features were added at different points in time, with different thought processes.

In 2019 they made a flowchart to help: Student Grade Visibility Flowchart - Instructure Community - 387095 (and that flowchart doesn't mention how question comments behave on each situation):

While I am sure there are simpler ways to do it, I do worry that any changes at this point will likely lead to current courses behaving in ways the professors don't intend to, unless they use a feature flag to choose between the old (current) and the new system.

About the font, what do you mean? The default font in Canvas seems to be Lato, but your institution can choose to change your instance's default to any other font.

[Gabriel33 · Accepted solution]

I agree it is somewhat confusing. My guess is that some features were added at different points in time, with different thought processes.

In 2019 they made a flowchart to help: Student Grade Visibility Flowchart - Instructure Community - 387095 (and that flowchart doesn't mention how question comments behave on each situation):

While I am sure there are simpler ways to do it, I do worry that any changes at this point will likely lead to current courses behaving in ways the professors don't intend to, unless they use a feature flag to choose between the old (current) and the new system.

About the font, what do you mean? The default font in Canvas seems to be Lato, but your institution can choose to change your instance's default to any other font.

[dbrace]

Thanks for sharing the name of the font.

[Mike71]

Thanks for the font information. I'll check with my District to see if they are the ones responsible for the default cartoonish-font that I see.

[dbrace]

@Mike71,

Do you know if your district is using the Canvas Elementary theme/functionality?

What is Canvas for Elementary? - Instructure Community - 496844

How do I use an elementary-level theme in a course as an instructor? - Instructure Community - 672

New font selection available for Canvas for Elementary - Instructure Community - 566708

If they are, they might have enabled a different font that became available in May 2023.

-Doug

[Mike71]

Aha! YES! That's it. The font is called Balsamiq Sans. Thank you very much.  

[Gabriel33]

Just checked it, and it is indeed way too cartoonish. Good luck in convincing your admin to change it!

[chriscas · Accepted solution]

Hi @Mike71,

This exact feature is one I always point to as a bit of a cautionary tale around feature requests...  In earlier days of Canvas, there was a very simple "mute" for each assignment in the grades area that when enabled would hide all grading activity for that assignment.  Teachers could "unmute" when they were ready and any grade info was revealed to students at that point.  Muting could be done before any grading happened, but teachers would need to remember to do that step before they started grading.  Muting applies to all grades for a certain assignment, regardless of what section a student was in, and couldn't be changed on a per-student or section level at all.  It was fairly simple, but effective (especially for schools/institutions with smaller classes).

Then, after a ton of feature requests for more control over grade/comment hiding.posting, Instructure released the current system in July 2019.  While I think teachers of larger multi-section courses appreciate the features the current system added, it definitely added complexity that a lot of people still don't understand to this day.  The mew system allows teachers to set up behavior from future-entered grades (posting policy) vs already graded things (hiding), and allows posting to certain sections, all of which segments of users wanted.  Those who liked the simplicity of the old system basically had to learn the complexities of the new...

Now, aside from comments, I can tell you how I usually talk to teachers about this...  I'll generally say the grade posting policy is how to control what will happen when grades are entered in the future. The Hide grades option only controls what has already been done, and that even comes with a big caveat...  Many students have grade notifications configured, so they get their grades emailed ro delivered as an app notification as soon as they are released...  While hiding the grades will keep them from being displayed if the student goes to the Canvas grades area, many will have already gotten their grades via other means.

So overall, the flowchart @Gabriel33 does seem to be basically correct still today.  It may make things look slightly more complex than they really are, but this isn't totally simple anymore.  I do think it's important to point out that the complexity is the result of a lot of user requests...  I do't envy the folks at Instructure who have to evaluate ideas, prioritize them, then implement them, as it's got to be a very hard process.  There is hardly ever one solution everyone will universally like, and even though I myself advocate for options at times, I also realize that having too many options also can result in a product that's too confusing for anyone to figure out.

I don't know if this info helps at all, but I thought I'd offer a bit more on the history around this particular feature.

-Chris

[Mike71]

I can hardly imagine how difficult it must be for Instructure to try to please thousands of teachers. I can sympathize with that. However, I'm referring to multiple comments from Instructure (including the one I posted above) indicating the confusion about hidden grades and comments is intentional. 

In other words, Instructure does not want teachers to hide grades and comments and so it has designed a system that makes doing so difficult. 

As far as complexity is concerned, my hope is that, in the future, teachers will be able to choose from several interfaces that are ranked according to complexity. So, for example, I would be able to choose "Canvas Basics" while some other teacher in my District could choose "Canvas Advanced." It's not an exact comparison but I have seen Adobe and Microsoft Office offer different versions with different levels of complexity. 

I digress.

My main point is to raise concern regarding default difficulty surrounding the hiding of grades and comments AND the possibility that this difficulty is intentional.