Student view: View submissions and comments for all submissions

This idea has been developed and deployed to Canvas

 
Right now students can only view their most recently added submission to an assignment. This means that all previous submissions to the assignment are not available to students, including feedback that the instructors have provided. This is a big problem because students are losing critical information that could help promote learning and understanding.We need to eliminate this lossylearning problem and make all assignment submissions visible to students!
193 Comments
scottdennis
Instructure
Instructure

In addition to the lossylearning​ aspect it is also true that because students can only attach one submission type per submission and teachers may not realize that students can only see feedback from the latest submisson, teachers sometimes create assignment instructions directing students to, for example, submit a file attachment and the a media recording, url, etc.

sharris
Community Participant

Very important to our faculty. It has caused a lot of headaches over the past year.

jlaw
Community Novice

This is a significant issue for our institutes students and just doesn't make any sense from an educational point of view. 

jsparks
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni
Hello Friends! Thank you for your insights and suggestions. I absolutely understand how this is important. As we gather information, I'd like to pose a few questions...
  1. In your mind, where would students access submission history? Assignment details/submission screen?
  2. Would the expected behavior be the same as the instructor view (pick the submission from a drop-down menu), or would it be better if there something like an activity stream on the right sidebar?

Any insights you provide will help us move forward.

Thank you,

Jason

stevenwilliams
Community Participant

My expectation would be that student access to previous submissions would resemble that of Instructors -- via a dropdown menu within the Assignment details/submission area.

kona
Community Champion

Deactivated user - I'm very excited that you're gathering information on this and will be happy to help any way I can! happypandadance​

1. Submission history would be available in the assignment details/submission screen.

2. I think the information (expected behavior) should be the same as the instructor view (pick from a drop-down menu), but would be ok with an activity stream if it showed all the submissions. My reasoning for it being the same as the instructor view is that it would make it easier for instructors to explain to students how to see all of their submissions because the look of it would be the same (similar) for both of them.

galyenk
Community Contributor

Jason....

Our whole team would love this!

I am in line with the above commenters.

1. Submission history would be available in the assignment details/submission screen.

2. The behavior would be the same as the instructor view, with the student being able to choose from a drop-down menu and jump to that particular submission. However, an activity stream would also be OK as well....as long as it was easy to navigate back and quickly view other submissions. But Kona's reasoning for the instructor being able to communicate to the student how to view all of their submissions by just referencing their own is (i think) highly valuable. Many times teachers don't know what the student view looks like, so the more different it is, the more confusion there ends up being between teacher and student (and the more erroneous tickets we get).

Other notes:

It would be very important that the student see the Crocodoc comments on their document, as this allows them to reference prior teacher comments and integrate them.

Also keep in mind that our team would likely use this as a journaling feature (which allows for one assignment but the student could easily see all previous entries)....so if this quickly allows the student to reference prior material, this targets that feature request as well.

Thank you!!!! I'm really happy you're looking into this.

kona
Community Champion

"It would be very important that the student see the Crocodoc comments on their document, as this allows them to reference prior teacher comments and integrate them." - YES, YES, YES!!!

It would also be important that ADMIN's can see all crocodoc comments. As it is, if I look as an admin I can only see crocodoc feedback for the most recent submission, even though I can see all submissions. This has caused a LOT of confusion in the past because we can't see what the instructors are seeing. I have to masquerade as the instructor and then I can see all submissions with their crocodoc feedback.

jlaw
Community Novice

The instructors view works fine and I assume would be the easiest from your end to replicate for the students.

It needs to be easy to access and see when it’s needed but not taking up too much screen when they are only interested in their latest submission.

regards

Joanne Law

Director of Studies – Mediation Institute Pty Ltd

Call me @: 03 8370 2301 or 0401 293 500

Visit me @: 70 – 90 Chelmsford St, Kensington Vic 3031

Email me @: joanne.law@mediationinstitute.com.au<mailto:joanne.law@mediationinstitute.com.au>

ahite
Community Novice

For assignments where students have to post their work (critique of an article) and a copy of the article, they only see the last thing they submit. Which is usually the article. I put annotations all through their critique and they can't see it. They need to be able to see all their submissions and all feedback.

Also, Students freak out when they check their submission and only see the last thing they post. I warn them now, but they still keep re-submitting frantically at the due date/time, thinking only 1 thing will submit. If you allow re-submissions, then they should be able to see them all, just like faculty in the corner drop down menu. Thanks!