Speedgrader Tools not showing

[mark_anderson]

Hi all,

I've experienced a small but annoying problem with assignments in Canvas.

I delivered a presentation to my staff on Monday about the joys and wonders of Speedgrader, especially the ability to use the feedback tools directly on student submissions. 

Lo and behold, I come to give feedback this morning on drafts that students submitted last night, and the tools aren't showing at all. I can't figure out how to make them appear, and no Canvas guides (that I can find) even mention the toolbar at all. I was using it perfectly on Monday with no issues on a different submission, but now, nothing!

Do Speedgrader tools get removed if the assignment has an attached rubric? If so, that doesn't make sense. As a teacher you should be able to correct specific parts of a task as well as using an overall rubric.

Help would be appreciated. This is extremely frustrating, especially when it works on a different task. 

Cheers,

Mark

[Stef_retired]

 @mark_anderson , it's hard to say without being able to look at the assignment itself; however the presence or absence of a rubric has no bearing on whether the DocViewer annotation tools are available for a particular assignment submission. The first possibility that came to my mind was that the assignment submissions for the assignment you were demonstrating were of a file type not supported by DocViewer, and you can review the supported file types here. 

[mark_anderson]

Hi Stephanie,

Thanks for the quick reply! Unfortunately, in a way, the file type isn't the issue as all the submissions are .docx, supported by DocViewer.

The image below shows the lack of annotation tools. 

[Stef_retired]

That is exceedingly strange,  @mark_anderson ‌, and I hope you've submitted a support ticket. I'm so sorry to hear that this happened to you in the middle of a demonstration (sadly, that's Murphy's Law, isn't it?).

[kumahata]

Hi Mark,

One of our faculty is having the same issue. Has the support team given you a solution for this?

[willj]

We were having this same problem.  What we determined in our case was that if you have peer reviews AND select them to be anonymous, the DocViewer tools disappear both for students and teachers.  If you deselect anonymous (but still do peer reviews), the tools came back.  

[chrhh · Accepted solution]

This solved the issue for me [deselect "peer-to-peer reviews are shown anonymously".

I'm reporting this as a bug in the instructure ticket-system.

[RebeccaReaRoss]

This bug still exists, and Canvas' official help and instructional materials do not mention this issue AT ALL.

I got lucky that I found your post. This is a big issue for instructors who have *no way of knowing* that this would cause the docviewer toolbar to simply not show up.

Even if Canvas can't get this fixed as a bug, they need to add this information to the official documentation.

[delveccr]

I do not see the Speedgrader tools for assignments submitted by some students in one assignment, assignments for other students are showing the tools.  I did not select peer review for this assignment.

Any ideas how to fix this?  Thanks for your help.

[DevonHackelton]

I had this problem in my class as well: on the same assignment, some submissions allowed me to mark up the text and other submissions did not. I figured out that the students who copied and pasted their essays into the textbox  had the essays I could not mark up because the tools were missing in SpeedGrader. However, I could mark up the texts of the students who uploaded files.

From now on, I will uncheck the box "Text Entry" (under "Online Entry Options") in the "Submission Type --> Online" field of the the assignment creation or editing page. 

[JimJack5000]

To confirm. March 2024, if your annotation tools in speedgrader are not visible, deselecting "Peer reviews appear anonymously" on the assignment page and refreshing the speedgrader page will make the tools visible.  

[sabitbol]

I just had the same problem and figured it out: the Beta gradebook is what gives you the SpeedGrader in the gradebook. You have to select it in your Course Settings under Feature Options. 

[lori_campbell]

This isn't the cause.  Our students use Google doc., and I know this is what has been submitted.  The crazy part is, this seems to be ASSIGNMENT specific not student specific.  And yes, I checked to make sure I had not set the upload restrictions.

[floresr]

Is the assignment published? If it is not published you will not see the Speedgrader option in tabs on the right.

Here is an assignment unpublished:

and here is the same assignment published

[kmeeusen]

Hi  @floresr ‌

You will note in Mark's screenshot, that he has 6/7 student submissions, and a submitting student's work is open. So the assignment is definitely published.

I think it is support ticket time.

Kelley

[floresr]

somehow I missed the screenshot. You're right. It's support ticket time!

[kmeeusen]

Don't worry, for every one you miss, I miss twenty, and my colleagues are always very happy to point that out to me. They always do it in the kindest way, but I still know what they are thinking;-}

Kelley

[fidalgok]

I'm having this same issue with a professor at my school. Their assignment happens to have a rubric attached to it. I'd love to hear how this gets resolved if at all. I feel like this is extremely silly if adding a rubric takes away the capability of annotating a document in Speedgrader.

[fidalgok]

I actually just did some additional testing. I found that it's not the rubric that takes away the ability to provide annotations in SpeedGrader. It was the fact that peer review is turned on. I'll have to see whether or not the annotation tools come back after all students have submitted assignments and completed their peer reviews. 

[kumahata]

We had this issue. In our case, it was because our faculty chose the assignment to be peer-reviewed anonymously. When this feature is selected the tool becomes disabled EVEN FOR THE TEACHERS. The reason I received from the support was "The way the feedback tools work right now is that they will automatically put your name next to annotations, so they are turned off for anonymous peer review assignments."

[fidalgok]

Awesome, thanks for the heads up.

[bsr]

I marked this as helpful, because the information is helpful. The feature quirk is certainly anything BUT helpful. I've lost count of the number of Canvas tools that don't work together. It seems like every tool I use disables another one somewhere else. Or two, in this case. On this assignment I assigned two anonymous reviewers per student, and it disabled automatic assignment of peer reviews and the speedgrader tools.

[vincent_n_lolor]

Agreed, this constraint is confusing and unhelpful!

[RebeccaReaRoss]

Then Canvas needs to add that to the official documentation for using DocViewer.

[Chris_Hofer]

Hello  @mark_anderson  ...

I have been reviewing older questions here in the Canvas Community, and I stumbled upon your question.  I noticed that there hasn't been much activity in this topic for quite some time.  Have you had a chance to review all the replies?  Did any of the Community's feedback help to answer your question?  If so,please go ahead and mark one of the replies above as "Correct".  However, if you are still looking for some help from Community members, please come back to this topic to post a message below so that someone from the Community might be able to assist you.  For now, I am going to mark your question as "Assumed Answered" because there hasn't been any new activity in this topic since April 24, 2018.  However, that won't prevent you or others from posting additional questions and/or comments below that are related to this topic.  I hope that's alright with you, Mark.  Looking forward to hearing back from you soon.

[sabitbol]

Hi Mark,

I remember this was resolved but I can't quite remember how (it was before

the summer). I think I was doing something wrong. Anyway, it worked out

fine after a while.

Thanks for the follow-up!

Sophie

On Fri, Aug 10, 2018 at 7:32 PM, chofer@morainepark.edu <

[charris4]

I still have the problem of not having SpeedGrader available as an option on a quiz, which is annoying because I have to navigate out of each student's quiz to get into the next student's quiz.  It appears that the Peer Review option has nothing to do with the SpeedGrader problem because I didn't select Peer Review.

[charris4]

I figured out my problem:  I had set up the quiz as a Practice Quiz.  (I actually don't recall making that choice; maybe it's the default?)  Once I changed it to a Graded Quiz, SpeedGrader was available.  Easy and logical fix. I hope that this helps!

[charris4]

Chris, please check my feedback regarding SpeedGrader on Quizzes. It’s an easy fix. Make sure that gets out. (I’m assuming you are a Canvas support tech?). Thanks!

[Chris_Hofer]

 @charris4 ...

I’m assuming you are a Canvas support tech?

Nope.  I work at a Technical College in Wisconsin helping instructors build course content as a Canvas admin for our Canvas environment.  I'm also a Canvas Coach (which is why you see the red "C" next to my name.  [I've been mistaken for other things, though.  Just yesterday in two separate stores (Walgreens and Target) two separate customers asked me if I could help them find something...as if I was employed there.  Target employees always wear red, but I had a blue jacket on.  But I digress.]

[smang1]

Chris, the workaround is answered (turn off anonymous peer review), but the problem remains. I found this comment thread today after not being able to figure out where my annotation tools went; turns out I accidentally enabled anonymous peer reviews. Un-checking that box in the assignment options fixed the problem.

It's surprising and frustrating that Canvas has known about this problem for almost 18 months and hasn't been able to figure out a fix.

[lori_campbell]

Chris, it took me exactly 6 months to figure out my own solution. And they wonder why we get frustrated!

[lori_campbell]

I discovered that if I assign peer reviews for an assignment and click the "reviewers remain anonymous", the tools disappear from SpeedGrader.  

[eschrank]

So it is now Feb 2019 and this is still an issue. Went through all of the above since the tools were not showing on an assignment. I did have the peer reviews anonymous checked. No review tools. Once I unchecked, all the tools are available. 

[erinhmcmillan]

Hi, all!

Just to give you a trail to a feature idea for this discussion, check out Anonymous peer reviews should be able to use markup bar. 

And if you're also interested in the peer review component, see Allow Instructor Markup via DocViewer Even When Anonymous Peer Reviews Are Enabled.

Thanks,

Erin

[pecchiog]

Hello everyone. I know this thread is a year old, but it came up when i searched out a similar problem. One thing that would have helped me solve my problem is if someone had stated that you cannot use the annotation toolbar during quizzes, only on assignments. So if anyone else makes that simple mistake, here's the answer. You cannot! Ha! When I googled "can you use annotation tool bar for quizzes on Canvas LMS?" nothing came up except this. Hope that helps and your doc viewer problems have been resolved!

[slopez3]

I have never done peer review (neither anonymously nor manually nor automatically). I am not trying to use this in a quiz. I merely wanted to add comments. I was able to do this last year but this year, the toolbar does not show up. This is the same course from last semester and I have taught it several times. I simply exported it from the previous semester it and changed the dates. 

Where did the doc viewer or tool bar go? 

Many have said this might be a support ticket issue. I do not know how to do that, I guess that will be my next google search. I hope to get a response soon. I have already spent too long trying to resolve the issue! 

Thanks,

[lori_campbell]

Make sure you have unchecked the setting “Anonymity” in the lesson settings. That will take the tool bars away.

[remy]

I'm not using peer reviews or anonymity and my toolbars are missing. I've tried it on multiple browsers with no change. Any ideas for me?

[wendell_smith]

There's something more going on here that no one seems to be mentioning. I had the SpeedGrader tools disappear for me on SOME submissions for the same assignment. For all of the students that cut and pasted a text file into the submission window, I had no DocViewer tools with which to annotate. Students who uploaded a Word document, I did. I will change my settings on future assignments accordingly, but this might give another clue as to what is going on. By the way there was no peer review selected. I do not know where "anonimity" is on assignment settings, except the ones for the entire class, and that was not selected either.