Autosave "additional comments" below a quiz question in SpeedGrader

(4)

When moving between student quiz submissions in SpeedGrader (using the left and right arrows at the top), the numerical scores are saved, but the "additional comments" fields below the questions are lost. In order to save these comments, you must click "Update Scores" before switching to another student's submission. (This is all using the "Grade by question (beta)" option -- not sure if that makes a difference.)

I've been told by Canvas Support that this behavior is intentional, but my request is that the "additional comments" fields below the questions be saved, like the numerical scores are, when switching between students, even without clicking the "Update Scores" button. It is quite natural to simply switch to another student when you are done with one, but that simple action erases (potentially) a lot of work commenting on the first student's quiz.

Originally submitted by Ezra Keshet

Also, clicking "update scores" and waiting for the refresh takes a long time. And then you still need to click to the next student and wait for another screen refresh. It would be great if the comments were automatically saved.

52 Comments
Beth_Young
Community Contributor

Has anyone else noticed that since the most recent production release, Canvas no longer remembers the scores either? I'm finding that I have to click "update grade" regardless of whether I've entered a comment or just a score, or the speedgrader forgets it. This makes me sad, since I was so excited about not having to remove those dashes anymore.

curtain
Community Participant

 @Renee_Carney ​, it looks like it is reported that this issue has gotten worse with the newest release and not better.  Surely that was not intentional!

hong_chau
Community Novice

Is there still hope this idea is still alive and kicking?

ffedel
Community Novice

If this is a "squeaky wheel gets the grease" situation, let this be my formal attempt at squeaking.  Sometimes, I spend a significant amount of time thinking about the comments I make to students, and when they disappear it is not only frustrating, it is a very inefficient use of my time.  I'm sure this sentiment reflects the thoughts of others who have experienced this issue.  Is it really that difficult to make the changes requested?  I don't see an argument for only considering it at this point.  What adverse impact could occur as a result of making the change to auto-save comments when the user is making them?  You could have them saved locally (I suppose) and only post them when you confirm that you want to post them.

Jeff_F
Community Champion

I just voted for this as I experience lost comments weekly.  I suspect the developers will be required to figure out how to save the instructor comments without them actually being 'submitted'.  This is so instructors can update and fix spelling issues prior to the email notification being sent to the students.

Jeff_F
Community Champion

ps.  I was lucky #100!!  Do I win a prize? Canvas T-shirt, maybe??

cwruck
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni

Hey all,

This is not on our current roadmap... but I'm going to see what I can do to squeeze in a change to this odd behavior. It's always bugged me and if we can squeeze a small fix to this in, I'd really like to do it. We're looking at auto-saving comments, but not auto-submitting them... there's no way for us to know when you're done writing the comment right now. So we're looking at auto-saving and keeping the auto-saved comment with the student you left it for, while also giving you a gentle reminder that you haven't submitted the comment yet when you navigate away from the current student. I think this is the best we can do without a major re-architecture of things... what do you all think?

mcohen
Community Explorer

I would love it if you could do this. Thanks.

Mirelle

cms_hickss
Community Contributor

I think the gentle reminder that the comment has not been saved/submitted along with an auto-save (where the comment stays with the student being graded and doesn't follow the teacher when s/he clicks to the next student) would be great.

Question, who would be able to see the auto-saved comment? Would an admin be able to see that the comment has not been submitted? Also, If the teacher closes the window will the comment be there the next time that student's submission is viewed?

ginan
Community Contributor

Christi, I think this would work great! It would save a lot of frustration for faculty.

elisabeth_green
Community Participant

I agree- this would work fine (and is pretty much the expected behavior).

Renee_Carney
Community Team
Community Team

   Update!  

This Idea is currently in development
ersmith1
Community Member

What's the status on this? I just lost 15 minutes of work -- not for the first time -- because the way "additional comments" are  saved is not at all intuitive. This is incredibly frustrating. Please move this up the priority list and/or update us on what we can expect.

rcragun
Community Novice

I think that the behavior should be the same as what people experience annotating submissions with Crocodoc. The average user is not going to expect something different in these two scenarios. We do not need to scroll down and then push a button to update scores and comments there. My decision about whether to have students submit work in uploaded files rather than in a text box is determined entirely by the poor functionality of grading the text box submissions. One of those poor functions is the extra time it takes to scroll down to the "update scores" button when I am trying to grade question-by-question for many students. I think that scores and comments should be submitted automatically when we hit the arrow to go to the next student. This is the expected behavior, because this exact same behavior shows up in one of the most commonly used features in the system (Crocodoc annotations).

cms_hickss
Community Contributor

Hi  @Renee_Carney -

Has this item been put into production? I thought it was saving the text put into the Assignment Comments as "draft" if the teacher uses the arrows to move to another student? Then if the teacher returned to a student's submission the teacher could post the draft comment by clicking on Submit.

This stopped the comment from accidentally being lost or from following from student to student until the submit button was clicked (which caused, sometimes, for the wrong comment to be saved to a student). 

mastersj
Community Novice

I agree this is very frustrating- having to click "update scores" dramatically increases the time required to score answers. Also, it just is illogical that one field is auto-saved and the other is not- what is the rationale for that?

I'm not sure if this needs to be another idea, but perhaps the default size of the Additional Comments box could be larger- obviously it can be enlarged, but the default size is (in my opinion) absurdly small!

Beth_Young
Community Contributor

mastersj‌ re: the default size of the Additional Comments box . . . I entirely agree! But I'm a lot less frustrated with it since I started using  the QuizWiz scripts that  @James  has provided. You might want to check those out: https://community.canvaslms.com/docs/DOC-8251-quizwiz-enhancements-to-speedgrader-and-quizzes 

mastersj
Community Novice

This is incredibly helpful, thank you!

monsonmj
Community Novice

So last comment date on this several months old, but still persists that comments are not automatically submitted when moving on to next student but the score is.    I see QuizWiz scripts but seems this should be built into program.  I dont have time to review all the comments on this topic to see where the matter stands.  Perhaps there should be some sort of "status" at the top (Resolved, UnResolved, You are out of luck, etc.) of subject.

james_humbersto
Community Novice

I'm pleased to see this is being treated as a bug. Every assignment I'm marking at the moment I've been finishing and then discovering some students marks incomplete and all of the detailed comments written into the Rubric are lost. I have to go back and remark them and it's VERY frustrating.

Today I realised that it was only happening to the students where, on completing marking them in the Rubric, I added an "Assignment comment" below. I click Submit, assuming it submits the comment and the mark and comments in rubric. Then I go to the next student with the right arrow. 

There is no warning "If you leave this page you will lose unsaved work", and the work is not saved. If you go straight back with the left arrow, all of the work has to be done again. Of course, the problem is of my own making - I should be clicking the Save button as well as Submit, but it's very poor design that it allows me to input all that data and then just lose it.

I do hope this will be fixed really soon!

James Humberstone (University of Sydney)