Import Grade Comments

[johnpj]

Problem:

Instructors need to upload comments for each student for an external assignment and have it displayed in the gradebook view for students.

Use Case:

This is especially significant when uploading assignment scores from an external system (student response "clicker" tools, Scantron services, external learning assessments). Often those external tools have a comments field with important details regarding the student's performance. In some cases the external system includes critical item information (e.g. "You answered A; The correct answer was B").

Proposed Solution:

1. Allow a comments field (column) in the gradebook import csv file.
2. Display the comment in a similar way that assignment comments are currently handled.
3. BONUS POINTS: Allow the comments to be exported in the Gradebook export csv

[DavidThompson]

This feature is available in Blackboard and I used it every class I taught.  To not allow comment upload along with the grade does me no real good.  Please add the feature to make the Canvas LMS more competitive with Blackboard.

[scombs426]

This feature was also available in Sakai.  I have users saying this is a big loss for our professional school and seriously impacts work time to enter these each individually.  I came here to vote but feel pretty discouraged that it's obviously not viewed as an important feature by Canvas since this appears to date back requests from 2015. 

[peterbastian]

I am new to Canvas, and had been an eCampus user for about 5 years. This feature was in eCampus and made it easy to grade assignments in a spreadsheet, with comments, and upload both the grade and the comments into eCampus in one operation. I liked how eCampus let you select the assignment you wanted to download, with or w/o comments. Put your information in there. Import back to eCampus. Simple. Fast. 

If I have 30, 40, 50+ students, I don't want to go through the Canvas UI to copy & paste comments.  This is slow and inefficient. I have other stuff I need to get done.

But, the fact that this very thread has been open since late 2015 (so, 5 years) means its not a priority. Yet the first few comments are along the line of "What a great feature idea!". I would like to see this made a priority. Our major university campus with 60,000 students has switched to Canvas this semester. That's a lot of profs who won't be able to upload grades/comments in bulk like they used to.

[KarlOswald]

I teach classes of 250 students. I have many assignments and use Excel to make grading comments. The time and energy it takes to individually copy those grading comments into Canvas is absurd. Given the activity of this thread for SIX years, how is uploading and importing grading comments not yet a Canvas feature? Am I missing something?

[peterbastian]

I too use Excel to manage and store grades and comments, relying on an importer to then bulk upload all that info to my gradebook (formerly, using eCampus and now, Canvas).

I can attest to this little workaround working and allowing me to import comments. I found it on this thread. You have to do the comment import as a separate step after importing the grades, but its a heck of a lot easier than doing it "the Instructure way", which is to say, copy & paste comments one student at a time.

https://oit.colorado.edu/services/teaching-learning-applications/canvas/enhancements-integrations/en...

A wee bit convoluted, but once installed properly, you will see this little button in your gradebook.

[jsraquet]

This has been out there for seven years now and I do not believe there is any sign of Canvas even starting to work on this PROBLEM/WEAKNESS with their software - I am very disappointed. Thanks to those who have informed me of the other systems that do have this tool so we'll know where to go next time we are looking to replace this tool.

[DamithR]

It is mind boggling that this 'essential' feature is still missing in Canvas 😞

[jsraquet]

And we have been asking for it for YEARS.

[ProductPanda]

Comments from Instructure

As part of the new Ideas & Themes process, all ideas in Idea Conversations were reviewed by the Product Team. Any Idea that was associated with an identified theme was moved to the new Idea & Themes space. Any Idea that was not part of the move is being marked as Archived. This will preserve the history of the conversations while also letting Community members know that Instructure will not explore the request at this time.