Annotation Notifications for Students

[DCK]

Is there a way that I, as the instructor, can turn of student notifications for annotations on an assignment? I know I can disable seeing their annotation notifications--I want to disable the notifications they get when I annotate their assignments. I was told today that they all receive notifications for every annotation I leave, and I leave a lot. They don't need to receive any notifications until the grade has been entered, though. So can I do this? 

[erik_lysbakken]

Has this been addressed? I have spent the last 30 minutes searching the community forum and there is a lot of feedback regarding this from the past years. Students do NOT need to receive 30-40 individual emails every time an assignment is graded... Please can someone from Instructure/Canvas comment on this? 

[erik_lysbakken]

BUMP

[TLiang]

I am shocked only 5 people also have this question.  I agree with the original author. Students should NOT receive an email for EVERY annotation comment.  Assignment comments, yes - please email the student right away.  Please point to where the solution to disable this feature is located.

[TrishaMeyer1]

Hi @erik_lysbakken and @TLiang ,

You will want to set your grade posting policy for assignments to prevent students from getting those notifications:

How do I use posting policies in a course?

"Alternatively, you can select a Manual posting policy for your course [2]. Assignment grades, grading comments and submission annotations are hidden from students until manually posted. Submission Annotations alone will not trigger the option to post grades; a grade or grading comment would need to be entered. Students can see peer review comments when assignment grades are hidden. However, students can only see instructor comments if the instructor posts grades or submission comments."

[TLiang]

Hello @TrishaMeyer1 

I appreciate the prompt response.  Yes, I have used the Hide Grades policy.  However, I have found that sometimes I have to click the hide grade option multiple times before it works.  I don't mind when students know when their assignment is graded and available to review, which is why I don't like using the Hide Grade.  But, can I suggest to Instructure/Canvas to disable the individual assignment annotation email notifications all together and only allow the assignment grading comment notifications?  I prefer students view all the annotations made while in Canvas looking at their submissions AFTER I have completed reviewing their work in its entirety.  They do not need to be notified of each one. 

Appreciate the information/feedback.

[erik_lysbakken]

Hi! 

Thank you for the reply. 

We are aware that manual posting is a thing, but most of our staff prefer to have this set to automatic. In our experience, manual posting causes some frustration among the students due to some teachers either forgetting to post the grades or posting them unresonably late. 

I just cant understand why every single comment/annotation should generate a new email notification to a student when having this set to automatic. In what context would that be useful for the student? In my opinion having these notifications bundled up in one "daily" notification or similar just makes a lot more sense. 

Again, thanks for the reply, but i would really like to see Instructure improving this. 

[geores]

This is exactly the problem we have.  Why should students get an email every time a teacher makes a single pen stroke while doing annotations?!  We can't see why it would ever be helpful.  Please adjust this, Instructure!

[EliseMatton]

Thank you for raising this issue again! This problem has plagued me for years — I have tried to move most of my mark-up of essays for example to be within speedgrader and DocView, but it frustrates both me and my students when they get pinged sometimes hundreds of times about these annotations. The only solution I can think of would be to have students turn off submission notifications altogether, but this isn't great because I rely upon them seeing my submission comments for other reminders and issues to easily communicate about a specific assignments. 

It seems incredibly unintuitive to me that Canvas wouldn't disaggregate the notifications for ANNOTATIONS from the notifications from SUBMISSION comments, which seem entirely different.