On page text annotation included in a annotated file download?

[Kinnick]

I am told by my tech department that CANVAS does NOT support on page text annotations as part of a students downloadable annotated text. I am having a hard time believing them.  Is this true? 

This has been a big frustration as reading "view feedback"  on screen is glitchy and often problematic (as a student I was thwarted by this feature and not able to easily read my teacher comments on my long essays.  Made their time almost useless since I inevitably gave up after a couple pages).   

My question,  if the downloadable annotated text has my highlighting,  why can it not have my written annotations?   The comments on the side are not spatial,  so I cannot make relevant spatial comments that make sense  (the student needs to click each individual side comment separately,  and would never see the spatial relationship between the comments.

I teach science.  Modelling is become a critical skill to teach students.  Spatial comments are becoming more critical for  science literacy, where understanding models in general (aka climate models) are central to our future well-being. 

Thanks you. 

Kinnick

[Stef_retired]

@Kinnick 

Students can view the annotations instructors make on their documents by following the instructions in How do I view annotation feedback comments from my instructor directly in my assignment submission?  As the information box notes,

Some browsers may not initially render comments correctly when viewing feedback. If your browser includes a built-in PDF viewer, select the option to view the PDF in the system viewer. You can also download PDF files with comments to view on your computer. The settings required to view or print the annotations in the PDF vary based on the software installed on your computer.

Please ask your tech department to work with those students who are not able to download an annotated PDF with comments or who are experiencing the difficulty you've described with the functionality; the View Annotated Comments section of the lesson shows how the comments should display contextually in the browser.

Thanks.

[LorenaHitchens]

Please ask Instructure to fix this bug. It is not the user's fault that comments don't sometimes show in their browser or their downloaded PDF. It is a choice on Instructure's part to save comments in different layers of the PDF.

See this: https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Idea-Conversations/Printable-Annotations-Critical-Need/idc-p/5115...