[ARCHIVED] Student replying with quoted email to grading comments

[studyvs]

I've been teaching on Canvas for a few years now, and I've never seen this before. I post comments when I grade assignments. I know that if students have email notifications turned on for assignment comments, they will receive the comment with the grade in their email. I have had students respond to these comments before, but this semester is the first time I've ever seen a reply that contains the quoted email they were sent from Canvas. While it has the student response at the top, this was sent as HTML, so the original email that they received, including the HTML code, is in the comment box for the assignment. I can even see at the bottom of the message where it shows:

"You can review the submission details using the link below, or can reply to this comment by responding to this message. When allowed, if you need to include an attachment, please log in to Canvas and reply to the submission."

So clearly the student is keeping the quoted email when responding, and while I mentioned this to the student, it continued for every assignment. Is there any way to prevent the quoted message to be included in the comment within Canvas? Is there any way to turn off their ability to reply directly to that message, requiring them to log into Canvas to post their replies? Is there perhaps a way for me to edit that outgoing message they receive asking them to not reply via email?

[gnoack]

The only solution I can come up with is to ask the student to not reply to comments from their email, instead they should click the link provided to go into the assignment in Canvas and post a reply on the assignment page. 

I would guess that the issue is a setting in the students email client.  Do all of your students have the same email client, like a school assigned email address,  and it is only the one student that this is happening to? If so, perhaps the student has forwarded the email notifications to a second email account and is replying there.

[studyvs]

While I appreciate your suggestions, telling students not to reply to the comments from their email is not a workable solution nor fixes the underlying problem. Especially since the email that goes out to them mentions that they can simply reply to that email to respond to the comment. And since I am not able to modify this outgoing message, I would need to add that into my comments every time I am grading. And then it will appear that I am contradicting the text in the message they receive since it says they can reply to that message. It seems you are also assuming that when I ask a student to "click the link provided to go into the assignment" that this is what they will do. As I stated in my original post, I had already asked the student not to reply to the message due to this issue. I even showed this particular student what was happening in the comments, but as you can imagine, there was no response from the student nor any change to the way the student was replying to comments received on assignments.

While you mention that the problem is the email client, I can't control what email client the students use. Yes, the students have a campus-based email address, but what they use to check their email can vary wildly. I have no control over this. However, you did identify the issue that students can forward their campus emails (their edu address) to their personal email addresses, and then reply from that email address. So what is happening is that the email they are sent from Canvas with the Comments I posted for their grade is then forwarded to their personal (non edu email) email. The problem is in the Canvas system that sends the email assumes that they are responding directly from that message, not from a message that has been forwarded to them. So when they merely reply to that message (as the message mentions they can), including the original quoted message, when it is sent back to Canvas it appears that the entire message with the HTML is the student's response and it is posted as a comment.

I still think there should be some way in Canvas to allow me to edit the outgoing message so it always states that they need to login to Canvas to reply, instead of the message stating that they can reply to that message to respond to the comment. I also want them to log in to look at the comments, as this means that they will actually take the time to look a the grade they received.

[gnoack]

 Hi studyvs,

Yup, I mentioned the email client and forwarding as I thought you might be able to work with the student to identify the issue and correct any settings.  But, as you said, you can't control what the students do.

To answer your specific questions. 

Is there any way to prevent the quoted message to be included in the comment within Canvas?

I don't know of a way, but I'm not fully sure what is causing it.  I'm guessing this is the result of the email tool or settings of the student, not anything in Canvas.  You'd have to explore the student's device and email client settings as it's most likely the result of how the message is sent.

Is there any way to turn off their ability to reply directly to that message, requiring them to log into Canvas to post their replies?

Not that I know of,  notifications are a user controlled setting.  You could ask your Canvas Admins to submit a ticket to be sure.  

Is there perhaps a way for me to edit that outgoing message they receive asking them to not reply via email?

I do not know of a way to do this, but again,  you could ask your Canvas Admins to submit a ticket to be sure.