How to provide students with feedback to essay questions (in Canvas)?

[LamisJomaa]

I am facing difficulty in providing students with the correct answers for essay questions that are included as part of our weekly class quizzes and assignments. I want to have the correct answers presented to the students after they complete the submission so it can make it easier on them to learn the material and easier for me to do the grading.  However, this option does not seem to be available in Canvas for essay questions, am I correct? For example, I noticed that when I have numerical questions or T/F and multiple-choice type of questions, we can give feedback for correct answers (green box) and feedback for incorrect answers (in red comments box). This option is not available for essay questions as it seems and the grey box 'general answer comments' I am afraid would show up on the students' side while they are reading the question as a hint. 

In other words, how can I let students who complete essay questions get the correct answers/feedback AFTER they complete their quiz and not during their quiz time.

Thank you in advance for any helpful tips!

[Chris_Hofer]

Hello @LamisJomaa ...

The gray "General answer comments" box for essay questions in the Classic Quizzes interface would not display any text you put in there to students while they are taking the quiz.  If you take a look at the bottom of this Guide:

How do I create an Essay quiz question? - Instructure Community (canvaslms.com)

...you can see that the example displayed there includes some information for students that their essay response will be graded shortly.  I'm sure you could put in some other text in there if you wanted...such as feedback about the question they had just answered.  You could easily test this out in your own course by creating an unpublished quiz with an essay question and general answer comments.  Then, preview what the quiz looks like and try submitting it to see what happens.

Please keep us posted here in the Community.  Thanks, and good luck!

[LamisJomaa]

Chris - Thank you for your quick response.  Based on the info and link you provided, the general comments section for essay questions can be used to give general comments for students immediately after they submit their answers. If I want to delay that students see the graded/correct answers or feedback to their responses till after a specific due date (when all students completed their work), then it does not seem to be a feature that is available in Canvas for essay questions. The numerical questions and the T and F or MCQ questions have the option of adding feedback specific to correct and incorrect answers. 

I wished that such an option would have been available for the essay questions so we can enter the feedback to students, and they can only view it after the due date has passed. Any other suggestions??

[Chris_Hofer · Accepted solution]

@LamisJomaa ...

I see what you mean.  In the settings for Classic Quizzes, you can select the option of "Let Student See Their Quiz Responses (Incorrect Question Will Be Marked in Student Feedback)", and then if that option is selected, you can further select, "Let Student See The Correct Answers" with date fields to "Show Correct Answers at" and "Hide Correct Answers at".  But, that only seems to be for "correct" responses...not for the general comments that you're asking about.

Have you explored New Quizzes yet?  In New Quizzes, you get feedback options for correct, incorrect, and general comments ... all for the Essay types of questions (instead of just general comments in the Classic Quiz interface).

These are part of the settings within the New Quizzes interface.  I've checked all options here so that you can see what they are.  (Some of them are initially grayed out until you select other options.)  I wonder if things like "Show item feedback" might be what you're looking for?

How do I restrict students from viewing quiz resul... - Instructure Community (canvaslms.com)

If you don't have New Quizzes available yet, you could talk with your school's Canvas administrator to see what their plan is to make New Quizzes available to you and other instructors at your school.

Not sure if any of this will help, but I'm providing the info just in case.  🙂

[LamisJomaa]

Thank you for all this helpful info and the link. I will definitely check out the new quizzes and see if we can have access to it at our campus and explore these features. Hopefully one of these options will work!