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
Renee_Carney
Community Team
Community Team

The Radar idea stage has been removed from the Feature Idea Process.  You can read more about why in the blog post Adaptation: Feature Idea Process Changes.

 

This change will only impact the stage sort of this idea and will not change how it is voted on or how it is considered during prioritization activities.  This change will streamline the list of ideas 'open for voting', making it easier for you to see the true top voted ideas in one sort, here.

KristinL
Community Team
Community Team

Hi! Did you know that students can view/access past submissions through the Canvas Student app? After opening the submission, students can see the items they submit inline with any submission comments.

ldraper2
Community Novice

That's great news Kristin. Thanks for the info..

On Tue, Sep 11, 2018 at 12:23 PM, kristin.lundstrum@delasalle.com <

dianepbh
Community Participant

Great for kids who have phones... not great if kids do not have phones. Access to all comments from the instructor needs to be available on all platforms. The whole point of feedback is to view it, review it, revise it, etc etc... (I know... Preachin' to the choir but really this is such a needed requirement for gradebook.)

catherine_carne
Community Participant

I agree that this ability needs to be across all platforms. My school is 1:1 but students often still use the computers or use their iPad but ope Canvas in Safari. It is harder to read comments on an iPad or phone as well. 

mazorow_moya
Community Novice

My math students are learning to write proofs and can submit multiple revisions as part of the learning process.  Neither of us can see the old feedback.  I can't judge whether or not their skill is maturing and have to essentially start the grading and annotating process over on the revision resulting in a longer turn around time.  Additionally, I am unable to judge if my feedback is useful to the student.   I have had no complaints about not seeing original feedback but I have had a huge number of complaints because I am falling behind in my grading and they are panicking about getting feedback before their exam.

corinne_dedini
Community Novice

This is a crazy blindspot for Canvas - teachers have been asking for this feature update for three years and still no ability to make an assignment formative instead of summative for students.  Disappointing.  

maria_malmstrom
Community Novice

It is very important that the students do not loose feedback during their work on an assignment. This is mainly because this is loss of a learning opportunity, but also because it is a waste of teacher's time! In particular, as it is often "weak" students that need to submit several revisions of an assignment, it is important that they can go back and review previous feedback, and that the teacher can refer to it in feedback to later versions. I'm surprised that CANVAS still suffers from this giant drawback!

michelle_jacobs
Community Novice

I agree completely! Faculty are able to see multiple submissions, so I would think students could as well.

There are times when I request students to submit multiple documents for a single assignment. This could be for various reasons. One example may be the need for an excel file and a written word document to explain the file. When students are only able to see the most recent submission, two different problems consistently arise. 

 

First, students contact me in a panic. They think there is a problem with their submission, because the newest upload is "cancelling out" the first upload. I have to reassure the students that while they can only see one document, I can see all of them. 

 

The second problem I encounter with this is related to feedback. If I provide feedback within the documents themselves, the student is only able to see one of the documents, meaning they missed all the feedback for the other document(s). There are many times I have forgotten that students could not see the document that I provided comments on. This results in a disservice to the student as they did not receive valuable insight, and is a waste of my time. To work around this I simply provide feedback within the comment section of the assignment, but I do not feel this is as effective as marking notes directly on the document. 

 

To work around this issue, students may attach a document to a comment within the assignment. This works fine in some instances, but does not work well if I want to provide feedback on the document (have to save  the assignment to the my computer, make comments, then re-attach to a comment).

 

Thank you for your consideration.

Michelle

hansardc
Community Participant

Glad to see this is being put into production. This will include Arc video submissions, too, right?