Allow students to View Feedback from the Grades page

(2)
I write lots of comments in the text of my students' essays using Speedgrader, but my students can't access these in-text comments from the Grades page. All they can see are the end comments. To see their in-text comments, they have to go to the assignment, then click on Submission Details, then click on View Feedback. It's no wonder many of my students are never reading my carefully crafted comments. Why can't there be a way for students to click View Feedback directly from the Grades page?
27 Comments
biray
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni

Thank you for your submission,  @jhurley ​. This idea will be open for voting in the next voting cycle. Smiley Happy

jordan
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni

This idea has moved to the next stage and will be open for voting among the Canvas Community, from Wed. November 4, 2015 - Wed. February 3, 2016.

Check out this doc for additional details about how the voting process works!

kroeninm
Community Champion

Yes, it would lovely if the inline text comments were more prominent.  I advise instructors to add a comment to every grade saying - "see inline comments" as otherwise they have to train students to look for inline comments.  There is a rubric icon and other indicators but none for inline comments. 

- Melanie

jhurley
Community Novice

Thanks, Melanie. Please let others know so that we can get the votes to make this happen! It will make life so much easier for English professors.

gchristensen
Community Novice

I'm less likely to use the in-line comments feature in Speedgrader precisely because it's not immediately accessible to students. Less visibility / more click throughs required to find something is a recipe for missed learning opportunities for my students, and also (not incidentally) the principal reason I've left Blackboard in favor of you guys. So yeah, as another English professor, I absolutely support an easier, more intuitive and seamless way for Ss to view comments from the Gradebook. We don't want them to have to search in multiple places for different kinds of feedback - it just means they won't find it, or won't know it exists, or will give up in frustration, etc. etc. and we'll lose them. Which undermines what so many of us like about Canvas.

SethBattis
Community Contributor

Yes. The best would be a feedback-first option, to present students with the rich feedback before they can get to their grade!

A few of our teachers have been experimenting with different approaches, and one that they seem to be fairly happy with is an LTI that I hacked together for them that presents students with a narrative of all of their assignment feedback on a single page (like the recent posts, but complete). It doesn't pull out Crocodoc comments, but anything that was a comment on the whole assignment is there.

Also, assuming a student makes it to the submission details page, I also hacked together (for the same teachers, of course) a Javascript that pops open the Crocodoc preview and rubric automagically when they get there.

jhurley
Community Novice

Seth, How does one implement this LTI? It sounds great.

Jennifer Hurley

Associate Professor of English

Ohlone College - Newark Campus

SethBattis
Community Contributor

 @jhurley ​, you need a LAMP server to host it (possibly Heroku would work -- I haven't tried that). The trick is that, to work, the LTI has to turn around and make API requests. The short version of standing this up (and I'd be happy to talk with any local techies at your end who wanted to try it out) would be:

  1. Clone the repository off of GitHub
  2. Install dependencies with Composer
  3. Point your web browser at `<install location>/admin` and enter info in the install script (API token request, MySQL credentials, etc.)
  4. Generate a consumer key and shared secret
  5. Distribute the config.xml URL and, key and secret (all on the consumer keys page) to anyone who wants to use it.

It takes about 5 minutes (if you happen to have a handy LAMP server hanging around). I'd offer to let you take a spin with our install, but it's set up with an administrative token that's linked to our Canvas instance, so it wouldn't be able to talk to your Canvas instance.

jhurley
Community Novice

Thank you, Seth! How kind of you to share this. Wow, this looks a bit over my head, technical-wise. I will bookmark it for later thought, though. Thank you!!!!

Jennifer Hurley

Associate Professor of English

Ohlone College - Newark Campus

delicia_daniels
Community Novice

This is an excellent idea! Students should have the ability to view feedback in connection to their grades.

katie_hoffman
Community Novice

Yes, please! I spend time in class going over the steps to access the feedback and send them screenshots with instructions, but it shouldn't be this complicated. Feedback should be prominent if Canvas is meant to support learning as students already get so easily distracted by number grades rather than in-depth assessment (aka, feedback). I love the idea of the feedback showing up BEFORE the rubric/grade!

jhurley
Community Novice

Thank you, Katie. Yes, I agree that we want students’ attention drawn to the in-depth assessment, not the numerical or letter grade. Please vote for this idea if you haven’t done so. I hope we can make this happen!!

Jennifer Hurley

Associate Professor of English

Ohlone College - Newark Campus

kedgecomb
Community Champion

This is a great idea and would be super convenient for students!  Feedback is so important!

tonyafa
Community Participant

I agree!  We have several faculty members and students who are having the same issue right now.  An icon that pops up in the gradebook when there is annotated feedback (same as the general comments icon & rubric icon) would be much more intuitive for students.

jhurley
Community Novice

Thanks for your comment, Tonya. Please spread the word to your colleagues so we can get the votes to change this.

Jennifer Hurley

Associate Professor of English

Ohlone College - Newark Campus

cwruck
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni

Hey all,

We are working on redesigning the student's grades page, along with the submission page... we agree that we need to find ways to make it as easy as possible for students to find the feedback that you've taken the time to give them. We have a few ideas, but are still working through what the best solutions might be. Once we've come up with the best solution, I will loop back to this idea and let you know where we landed.

jhurley
Community Novice

Christi,

Thanks for all the work you and others are doing to improve the way students view feedback, especially in-text comments. We appreciate it.

Jennifer Hurley

Associate Professor of English

Ohlone College - Newark Campus

Renee_Carney
Community Team
Community Team

This idea was moved from Under Consideration stage (no longer in use) to the Product Radar stage.  

This change was made as part of a feature idea process evolution.  Find more information, and contribute insights, by joining Focus Group: DRAFT Feature Idea Space

Sylvia_Ami
Community Contributor

I welcome any improvement that makes it more intuitive for students to see any type of feedback. Redesigning so students see markups from DocViewer on their Grades page sounds too cluttered. Design-wise, what would this look like? Collapse/expand sections? While this idea is being considered, I'd also like to add improving student's access to  any type of feedback. For example, the way students see feedback on specific quiz questions.

RobDitto
Community Champion

Great comment,  @Sylvia_Ami  I'd love to see Canvas give simple, accessible hints on whether their submission includes particular types of feedback, making it unnecessary for students to open every document and "go hunting" for possible feedback.