Releases Q&A: 2021-05-15 Student Annotation Submissions

[erinhmcmillan]

Looking to discuss this feature from the 2021-05-15 Release Notes? Post a reply and start a conversation!

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[DeletedUser]

It seems a mistake to turn on student annotation assignments by default.

Our university uses new assignment enhancements. Even if a teacher creates a student annotation assignment, the students will not be able to view the document, annotate or hand in the assignment. In beta, there is no warning to let teachers know that this is the case.

[jsailor]

melody_pathkill, we are currently working to make this available with the same view as other assignment submission types when Assignment Enhancements - Student is enabled. In the meantime, we have just deployed an adjustment that will take students to the traditional submission flow, allowing users to benefit from this submission type even with that feature option enabled. 

[r_v_jones]

Has anyone been able to test this with Turnitin?
I am concerned that their maybe high matches shown as all students are effectively submitting the same document.

Secondly would students annotations be screened by turnitin ? I am guessing not but would like to know.

[ellen_peters]

Turnitin plagiarism detection only works for assignment of the 'File uploads' submission type. If a students submits an assignment of the 'Student annotation' submission type, it can't not be checked by Turnitin.

[fenstermaker_an]

Is this beta feature rolling out in waves to users? From my understanding, there shouldn't be any admin intervention needed for this feature to appear for teachers when creating assignments. However, we are not having any luck seeing the annotation option when creating an assignment. Am I missing something? Are others encountering this issue? 

Below is what we currently see when creating an assignment and selecting online. 

[jsailor]

@fenstermaker_an, you will need to be logged into your beta instance to test this feature at this time. If you are in your beta instance and still not seeing this, please submit a support ticket so that we can determine what might be awry. 

[r_v_jones]

whilst I like this tool there are a couple of things I am struggling with when testing 

1.  how can we distinguish tutors comments from students annotations. My current commendation is to use a Rubric for marking comments.
2. I can't get this to work wish Canvas Students App at all See screen shot from tablet. Has anyone been successful?

[atcarver]

While this feature doesn't support annotations on group assignments, is annotation for group assignments on the roadmap? Thanks!

[Chris_Hofer]

After I created a new assignment in my sandbox course using the new "Student Annotation" checkbox, I then viewed the assignment via "Student View".  When clicked on the assignment name from the "Assignments" index page, I only saw the directions I had typed in to the RCE.  I did not see the linked document that students would eventually be annotating.  I had to click on the "Start Assignment" button to actually view the document I had linked when I created the assignment.  It might be nice if students are able to preview the document when first accessing the assignment ... without having to also make a separate link to the file within the directions.  It seems that instructors would need to provide additional directions to students that they will see the file to annotate when they click the button to begin the assignment.  Just a thought.

[jsailor]

@Chris_Hofer, I totally agree that it would be best to show the document to students immediately. And, great news! We already have an engineer working to make that happen.  

[slfairburn]

If you try uploading the file with the assignment unpublished, the file technically uploads into course files, but does NOT load to the assignment if the assignment is unpublished when you try. Your students will get errors and can't access the file (because it's not there). If you add the document to the assignment with the assignment already published, it does work. Just FYI.

[jsailor]

@slfairburn, apologies, but I'm not sure that I am following. If an assignment is unpublished, students will not be able to access the file for annotation as they will not have access to the assignment until it is published. I've attempted to see what you might be describing, but have not seen any errors whether the file is added and and the assignment published immediately or left unpublished for a time, then published later for students. If you or your students are still seeing errors, please submit a support ticket with an explanation of when this is happening so that we can have support dig in and push up to our engineers if needed. 

[slfairburn]

If you try to add the document while it is unpublished, and then publish it, they can't access the document because it never uploads unless the assignment is already published before you try to add the document. Here's a video.

Also- I did have a ticket in, but I think they closed it when I discovered this is what happens- case # 07643456

[clong]

One week or so in and we are excited about the new Student Annotation feature! Thank You so much for adding this to Canvas!

Some feedback from one of our teachers that I would like to share with you is:

"I got an email notification every time a student made an annotation (so for a 20 question assignment, I got 20 “submission annotation"emails per student!) I checked my notification settings, and the only one I have on is student comments, which I don’t want to turn off because the emails let me know when a student replies to my comment in canvas. It appears that annotations now fall under this category. This might be a deal breaker for me.

[jsailor]

@clong, we were alerted of this earlier this week and immediately had an engineer start working to change this behavior as we don't know of any teacher that would want a notification for every annotation on these types of assignments. We are working to remove the notification for the individual annotations for this assignment type only, leaving only the notification for the submission. Depending on the user notification preferences, teachers will still receive notifications for annotations that are truly a comment on other submission types. 

[clong]

That is great news! Thanks so much Jody!

[JayceeLeitner]

Is there a way for students to unsubmit and edit their annotated assignments?  I teach 4th grade and find great value in students going over their own work and learning from their mistakes.  The only option now is "new attempt", but that clears the pdf and they have to start over.  Perhaps this could be an assignment setting because I understand that sometimes the teacher doesn't want the student to be able to change answers after they have been given.  I would just like the option.  It also lets me know that they were following along while we went over the assignment.  Thank you.

[slfairburn]

I second this, hardcore. It was so bad right off the bat that I had to create an email filter. My email now sends anything with "Submission Annotation" in the heading directly to the trash. Would love a way to turn those off.

[skreitzer]

Our student laptops do not have a built in stylus but are touch screen. When students try to use the free draw tool with their finger or a stylus that is not paired with their screen, the annotation doesn't work. Am I missing something? 

[alallen]

In the browser version of this feature, students cannot use a stylus (it simply scrolls like a finger). This is frustrating to students as drawing with their laptop trackpads is very challenging. Is there a way to add a stylus "button" or something that would allow them to toggle between using a stylus for drawing and for scrolling. I mostly use the pdf annotation feature in math with the idea that students could draw models, but they really struggle with it.