Student view: View submissions and comments for all submissions

[kona]

This idea has been developed and deployed to Canvas

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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!

[Stef_retired]

 @janet_morton ‌, the dates of the initial voting period for this idea are displayed in the header, which we've preserved to show exactly that--when the idea was first considered by the Community. It remains open for voting at this writing.

[janet_morton]

Thank you so much for your responses and to directing me to this idea.

[tomaszac]

I also wanted to suggest the same. This is a must have in my opinion. Here is a brief blog post I created to show some more info on this idea. 

https://community.canvaslms.com/community/ideas/blog/2017/06/13/allow-students-to-see-previous-submi... 

[Renee_Carney]

Zac, please add the information to this thread.  The blog post will not remain in the studio space.  We use studio blogs to communicate important updates in the process, or related to product.

[tomaszac]

Allow Students to See Previous Submissions with Teachers Feedback

Blog Post created by Zac Tomas on Jun 13, 2017

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Currently the Speedgrader allows students to submit multiple times, and teachers can add feedback to multiple submissions for an assignment. However, once a student submits an assignment a second time, they no longer have access to the teachers comments that were added to the first submission. I propose we change that to allow students to see this valuable teacher feedback added to their earlier submissions. 

The teachers feedback is already on Canvas, but it is not accessible to the students. Previously with the old crocodoc system I could work around this by downloading the annotated pdf and emailing it to the student. Now with the new docviewer the ability to download an annotated pdf is removed. 

Here is what the teacher sees, comments on the Feb 4th submission. 

But the student only sees the most recent submission from Jan 12th, and they do not have access to the previous submission with the teachers feedback. 

I have tested this using student view on a practice course, as shown below:

#gradebookenhancements_new

[craigring]

We have just realised that the ability to download annotated PDFs is removed as well. Support have said that is a bug, but there is not timeline on when or if it will ever be fixed. This feature has been voted up 207 times and has been requested over many years. With the teacher able to scan through a drop down menu of dated previous submissions, you would think that the functionality exists. I would like to keep assignments to a minimum and allow students to submit multiple sections of a project under one assignment heading. Students could then view all of their work from one project in one place. Currently we are unable to do this. Instead, we have upset staff members that have tried to do this as the hours they have spent leaving feedback has been wasted when a student decides to resubmit/add an extra page without reading the feedback. It doesn't quite convince less 'Canvas inclined' staff members to continue to use the system when they experience these faults. 

Does anyone know if there is a plan in place to provide a solution for this? It feels like a pretty basic flaw and something that should be given attention before moving onto new and exciting things. 

[Stef_retired]

 @craigring ‌, https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/8898-docviewer-instructor-feedback-download , giving students and teachers the ability to download annotated PDFs, is in development. Please follow the linked idea for updates on its progress.

[dab2225]

Hi Jason,

Yes, we would like the students to see their previous submissions, like the instructor drop down. We also need students to see faculty feedback for each submission. It's sounds like a journal type of assignment would be best.

Thank you!

[andrew_theodosi]

Like many others, I have run into the major issue of not being able to download annotated submissions in the new docviewer. Whilst this does absolutely need to be sorted,  I would like to voice my concern that the proposed fixing of this issue does NOT solve the problem of students not being able to see feedback from previous submissions.

I should not have to download the annotated pdf for each student and send it to them, nor should learners be expected to download it themselves before it disappears for them. The information is there, there just needs to be a link to their previous submissions for the students.

[melanie2]

I don't understand why this issue is 2 years old and hasn't been fixed yet, AND it has 221 up votes. It seems ridiculous that students lose teacher feedback just by re-submitting assignments. Teachers should not need to download annotated PDFs and send them to their students when the information is on Canvas. Please fix this. We have only been with Canvas since the end of August, but this issue has already caused much frustration. We teach writing, and the vast majority of our instruction comes via teacher feedback. This makes absolutely no sense.