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
jsparks
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni

Thank you for all of these great responses. I will update with more as soon as I can!

Best regards,

Jason

vrs07nl
Community Contributor

I note that students can now download current and past submissions but these do not include inline comments or associated feedback files or rubrics ... would be great if they could download all this or at least download all from a relevant course before they lose access to it

lane_worrall
Community Novice

This feature has been requested by many of our teachers and students.  I agree wholeheartedly with previous comments:

Submission history should be available to students in the assignment details/submission screen and it makes sense that the behavior would be the same as the instructor view, with the student being able to choose from a drop-down menu and view teacher comments (including Crocodoc comments) and rubric scores for each particular submission.

Renee_Carney
Community Team
Community Team

Thank you so much for the additional information each of you provided for Jason and his team.  They are working to prioritize this idea, however it is not possible within the next 6 months.  We will be archiving this idea, but don't forget to bookmark or follow it to receive updates.

msl_adm
Community Contributor

Funny that I came looking for this just now after the update from Instructure this morning.  A "beyond 6 months" timeframe is extremely disappointing... I think it's really unfortunate that this isn't a priority.  Students learn from improving on their work, right?  Why else do instructors take the time to comment on student work?  This is absolutely an example of lossylearning​, and I've come to expect better from Instructure.

Renee_Carney
Community Team
Community Team

msl_adm

Thank you for your post and we're so happy to have you in our community!  We know that it is tough to hear something is not able to make the squeeze in a jam packed roadmap; trust us, we try!  This feature is a priority to our product team and by the votes we see it is also priority for our community of users.  It's a bummer for us when we have to mark something archived, but we want to be honest and forthright with what is possible in a short timeframe and what is not.  Please do bookmark and follow this idea so that you will get updates when they are posted.

You might also want to check out Canvas Studio​ and Canvas Development Resources Allocation​ to see what is currently being worked on!

We wish we had the resources to immediately develop every brilliant idea that is posted!

marthazumack
Community Contributor

I agree, this continually causes trouble for our tutors and students... I'm hoping they'll seriously reconsider this after 6 months' time!

acompton
Community Contributor

This is an issue each semester with our students as well. They can re-submit an assignment until the deadline has passed and the assignment is closed, but if they upload part of an assignment (for instance, only one of two or three exercises that were required for a single assignment) at one time or on one day and the rest at another time, they only see their most recent submission and panic that they have overwritten their original submission. I've had to address this in each of my classes multiple times already this semester. It would be much more helpful if they could see each of their submissions for an assignment as we do in a drop-down option or just see each one and the date it was submitted in the confirmation when re-submitting.

  • In your mind, where would students access submission history? Assignment details/submission screen?
    • On the assignment/submission screen as we do in a drop-down list, or it could just show previous submissions with a list of file names and dates submitted (those previous submissions do not have to be active links to the documents, but it would be helpful if they were).
  • 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?
    • I think either of these options would work as long as they can see all of the files they've submitted for an assignment regardless of how many times they re-submitted prior to the deadline. If they had this information, it would cut down on a considerable number of emails with panicked messages about having overwritten their first submission with their re-submission and is it lost or do they have to re-do that part of the assignment. And if so, do they need to submit all files at one time in order to get them all turned in.
brendaa
Community Contributor

I agree with previous comments that this needs to be prioritized.  It is very confusing that multiple attempts are always allowed on an assignment, yet the student does not see SpeedGrader comments the faculty has added to an early attempt.  We have faculty who start grading as soon as they start receiving attempts.  They spend a lot of time adding detailed comments and then the student submits a new version and all of those comments are lost to the student.

parde
Community Novice

I am assuming that being able to see only the most recent submission is true of peer reviewers as well? I've masqueraded as a few of them and it seems to be true. I would appreciate it if anyone can confirm that.

If it's true, I would like to include with this feature request the ability for peer reviewers to see multiple drafts.