Discussions in SpeedGrader: Toggle between Full Discussion and Filtered by Student

[tom_gibbons]

I'm teaching my first course in Canvas in about 18 months, and I've been forcefully reminded of how difficult it is to grade discussions in SpeedGrader. 

Being able to see individual postings from students is great, and an important part of the assessment process. 

But I still need to be able to see the full context in which the postings are made, so I can understand how the postings integrate into the flow of the discussion and how they contribute to the discussion as a whole. 

I can have a second tab open, with the full discussion, but then I have to locate the specific posting for the particular student, and they may have quite a few. This requires a search by name, locating the exact posting in the search returns, then clicking the "view in discussion" link. Rinse and repeat until I've managed to pull together a reasonable assessment for that student.

It's a drag. 

BUT! The "View in Discussion" functionality already exists in the main discussion interface. Adding that link to the bottom of every post in the SpeedGrader View would be AWESOME. 

Oooh! and then? Also a button for "Return to Filtered View." 

Basically it would allow instructors to toggle between the focused and global view of the discussion. 

And then we could conquer the world. 

[Stef_retired]

@tom_gibbons  After clicking on "view in full discussion," instructors who wish to return to the filtered view can click the back button on the browser. Will that work for your purposes? If it does, we can look into adding that instruction to the documentation, so just let us know.

Thanks!

[tom_gibbons]

@Stef_retired Thanks for the suggestion (and hiya! hope things are well with you). 

The problem with the "View the full discussion" link in SpeedGrader is that it drops you into the discussion, right at the top--it's not specific to a particular posting. So, you still have to search for the student and the post that you were looking for. It's not an easy workflow. 

The back button trick is helpful, BUT, if you're navigating content within a framed-in interface (and that frame already has its own set of navigation controls for shuttling through SpeedGrader to get to the next student, etc.), it's hard to make your brain go up one more Inception level to get to the browser controls. It's useful, but not an obvious choice.

Regardless, yes, adding that to the docs would be a helpful interim partial solution. But it doesn't address the primary workflow pain point (ack! I just said pain point...next thing you know I'll be talking about the size of an ask...). 

[Stef_retired]

@tom_gibbons 

Thanks, Tom! We'll move this forward for further discussion, and we've made a note to review the documentation. You might be interested in adding your thoughts to a long-standing conversation that approaches this from a different direction:  Grading Discussion in the Discussion Stream.

[tom_gibbons]

Thanks @Stefanie ! I did see that conversation before I posted, but it's kind of a different workflow, and would need a whole new component built into the discussion interface. I figured since all of the parts for what I'm asking for pretty much exist already, it would be a lower bar to this. Plus, it's kind of a different use case, in a way. 

If I were doing a full overhaul of discussion grading, I'd have a vertical split in the SpeedGrader content area.: left would be the full discussion, right would be the filtered student posts. Click on a post in the filtered view, and the full discussion scrolls to the location of that post to show the individual post in context. Something like this. It's a little busy, and needs refinement.

SpeedGrader mock-up showing side-by-side view of filtered posts and full discussion

[Steven_S]

Yes the view full discussion prompt already exists:

But of course, it opens to the top of the list instead of jumping to that specific post.  And since the reason is most likely to see what a reply post was in response to (not to see the initial post again) why not put a link on each reply post that lets us jump to that specific post in the full discussion.

The link available now also does not have a return to previous view, which would be very helpful.  If you are not in the middle of grading a rubric, you can use the refresh button, however when you are grading, refreshing will require you o restart.

[RussSimon]

I teach for a university that uses Canvas and I have discussion boards almost every week. I have got to agree with Tom and say that this is unique from the link posted above and a feature that would make a huge difference for helping instructors when reviewing and grading discussions.

[nicolebdouglas]

Hitting the back button doesn't help because it will take you back to the grades page that doesn't have the grading saved that I just saved in Speedgrader. I would love it if when I click on Speedgrader I can see what the questions were that were in the assignment so I know what they were supposed to answer and if it's a discussion post be able to see the message of the person they were replying to. It would be even more awesome if speedgrader just displayed the page on the left with the speedgrader option on the right, kind of like how in the Grades page the right-side popout allows you to see the whole class and all the assignments in the module on the left, but then arrow through each student or each assignment with a simple click of a button. Why not just display their answer in that pop-out on the grades page and do away with Speedgrader? Speedgrader doesn't really save time for me. I can enter grades faster through the grades page pop-out...I just can't see their answers there.

[gillham1]

When using the Speedgrader to grade Discussion Board posts, Canvas doesn't indicate who the responses are directed to. For example, I can see that Bob responded to a post in the Discussion Board, but I don't know if that response was written to Susan, Jose, or Joe. Can you please add a feature so that when I'm grading responses to the Discussion Board I can see who each response was written to?

Thank you,

John

[ProductPanda]

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