Instructor Annotation Tool Missing in Peer Reviewed Assignments

[pshea]

I've noticed that the annotation tool in Speed Grader is not present in some of my assignments. I believe it is the one where I assign peer reviews. Does the use of the peer review tool make the instructor feedback tools in the gradebook disappear? If so, how can I enable it so that both the student peers and I can make comments?

[kblack · Accepted solution]

Hi  @pshea  Welcome to the Canvas Community. I'm not much of a gambling man, but I am willing to bet that the reason you cannot add feedback is because you made the peer reviews anonymous.  This this pointed out towards the bottom of the online lesson How do I use peer review assignments in a course? under Notes about Anonymous Peer Reviews:

• Canvas DocViewer does not support anonymous comments, so it cannot be used for annotated feedback on assignments with anonymous peer reviews.

Frankly, given the many, many advances that Canvas has recently made the past several releases in relation to anonymous grading I'm mildly surprised that this has not been addressed yet. Perhaps it will be soon.  In the meantime, there are two Feature Ideas still open for voting that you may want to check:

https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/8916-allow-instructor-markup-via-docviewer-even-when-anonymous... 

https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/12487-anonymous-peer-reviews-should-be-able-to-use-markup-bar 

There is a slight difference between the two Ideas, since actually even student peer reviewers can use the annotation tools in SpeedGrader, and the second Idea asks for that to happen, as well.  

If you did NOT enable anonymous peer reviews, then something is up that may be worthwhile reporting to Canvas.  But I believe that this is what happened.

I hope this helps a bit, Peter!

[cameron_redsell]

The fact that this was "milding surprised" in 2018, doesn't bode well for my frustration with it.... I guess we just have to decide between student privacy and good feedback.