Auto Save Rubrics or Give Save Warning

This idea has been developed and deployed to Canvas

Several times, when grading with a rubric, I find that I have navigated away from the rubric without saving the marks. Is it possible to add a warning that the rubric markings have not been saved when I attempt to navigate away? I believe that sometimes this happens because I added comments at the bottom of the grading page, and only hit that "Submit" button, but not the Save button for the rubric. Perhaps that Submit button could take care of both the rubric and the comments? 

86 Comments
evan1
Community Explorer

I would like to echo this and add my support. I would also like to broaden the scope to include not just rubric entries, but all SpeedGrader scoring entries. I just had a painful discussion with one of our faculty who graded the entire class, moving from one student to the next, without hitting the update button. It may seem like that should have been an obvious button to click before toggling to another student, but she told me that as she toggled around it appeared her work was being saved. The browser then timed out before she finished grading and not a single score was actually saved, even though the UI appeared to indicate autosaving.

For one thing, "update" is not even obvious language to use here. Something like "Save" and/or "Save and next" could be much more obvious to a grader that this is an important button.

Beyond that, a warning should pop up if toggling to another student without saving IF auto-save is not a feature. If there's no auto-save at periodic times, then SpeedGrader should absolutely auto-save when toggling to another student at the very least.

I'm not sure if this exists in another thread, so feel free to redirect me if so (I searched around a bit before posting here).

Stef_retired
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni

@evan1 

This is indeed a separate issue from rubric grading. When instructors enter a score in the Speedgrader grade field, their entry is autosaved when they advance to the next student. When I tested this just now, I didn't see an Update button at all. Was the instructor perhaps grading a quiz How do I grade quiz questions in SpeedGrader? or How do I grade an assessment in New Quizzes? 

evan1
Community Explorer

@Stef_retired, thanks for the quick reply. Yes, this is indeed related to quiz grading in legacy quizzes, not New Quizzes.

Stef_retired
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni

@evan1 Thanks for clarifying that. Our product teams are no longer developing new functionality on the code base for Old (Classic) Quizzes, which is scheduled for deprecation, and we believe the instructor will have a better experience when grading with the new quiz tool.

evan1
Community Explorer

@Stef_retired Understood! I've shared that with our IT department.

a1063023
Community Explorer

1000% yes. There is a lot of confusion from our staff between the Save button and the Submit button. Every single year we have at least one honours rubric assessment that is lost because one of our academics falls prey to this poor interface. Generally they remember the final mark and we just input that manually, and the unfortunate student(s) lose the opportunity to see the feedback they would have gained from the rubric. 

kyh802
Community Explorer

@Stef_retired If you enter a grade in the speedgrader grade field, it automatically saves, but what if you use the rubric to calculate that grade? It doesn't autosave the grades placed in the rubric, so if you accidentally move away from the page, you lose all those numbers as well as comments and have to start again. It's hair-tearingly frustrating. Do you know whether there are any plans to fix this issue?

Stef_retired
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni

@kyh802 We don't currently have an update to share on the idea being discussed here. My response was specific to a question in the thread about "broadening the scope" of this request.

holifiel
Community Novice

I just wanted to follow up to say that I got email from a student this week telling me that she couldn't see comments in a rubric from a couple of weeks ago. 

On the one hand, I should have double-checked, and she should have let me know sooner.

But on the other hand, this never would have happened if Canvas had included an auto-save or a warning. I'm so frustrated and angry that I spent considerable time writing her feedback, and now I have no way to retrieve it for her.

Could Canvas at least provide an explanation of why this has been so difficult to implement, or why it's not being prioritized? Please help us understand what's going on. (By the way, my comment was last auto-saved at 08:52 AM...)

kyh802
Community Explorer

Hear hear, @holifiel