Students able to see assignment comments on home screen even when grades are hidden - is there a way to prevent this?

[JakeBHarrison]

Hi, my school has run into a problem that we're not sure if it is a bug or if there's something that we may have incorrect in assignment/course settings.

An instructor reached out letting us know that students were able to see comments that he was leaving on the student's assignments before he released the grades. The assignment was set to manual grade release. We looked into the issue and when acting as a student were able to replicate this.

On the course homepage, in the right-hand notifications column under "recent feedback" the student could see the preview of the instructor comments for the assignment. However, if we then went to the assignment itself, the grade and assignments were hidden, and the student is shown the notifications "Grades are unavailable because the instructor is working on them." and "You may not see all comments right now because the assignment is currently being graded" - as expected.

What could be causing the comments to come through to the home page? Is this a bug?

Thank you!

Jake Harrison

[JeffCampbell]

Comments can be entered and sent to students separate from their grade. You could give students feedback without assigning a grade. This is likely why you are seeing this behavior. I am not aware of a way to turn this off or hide comments in Recent Feedback until "released" by the teacher in the default comments. Maybe someone else might have an idea.

[callinger]

Hello! I'm still not seeing a helpful answer to this question. It seems that students are able to see an assignment comment before grades/feedback are posted. I just helped an instructor with this same issue; he wrote a general feedback comment that referenced his more specific annotation feedback, and then at least one student emailed him to ask about the feedback (with screenshot of general comment).

Ideally, those general comments will not be visible to students until the grades/feedback are posted (using manual posting policy). Why would there be an exception for the homepage? This is a potential glitch that needs to be addressed, not something that needs a workaround.

[JeffCampbell]

Just out of curiosity, is there a reason why the instructor does not want to show the grades immediately upon grading? It might help to know this to help identify a workable solution.

It likely is not just the homepage. If the student were to go to the Grades page, they would also probably see the comment there. If true, this is likely not a glitch. Because the feedback and grade are two different entities, teachers may give feedback that is meant to help guide students towards improved work, rather than just a final note about their grade. Canvas would likely be more open to the suggestion of a separate spot to put grade-specific feedback that is coded to be part of the grade, rather than restricting comments to be tied to the grade. This way, the manual posting policy would tie to that feedback rather than the general comment feature, allowing teachers and students to use the comment feature to discuss the assignment (something that becomes very valuable in fully-online classes).

You might consider suggesting a feature by visiting the page to Submit a Feature Idea. At the moment, workarounds might be the only option.

[JakeBHarrison]

I believe this is mostly a workflow thing for faculty. They want comments to go live to students when they release a grade so they don't have students reaching out about comments while they're still grading other students work, or have students asking why they can see comments but no grade. They want everything to go out all at once with manual release so they can focus on grading/commenting on all of the students' work, and then transition to replying to students about grades and comments.

Thanks for the advice to submit a feature request! If this is consistent with what other people are seeing then I think you're correct that it just isn't how Canvas deals with the connection between comments and manual release currently.

Best,
Jake

[callinger]

Generally, folks use the manual grading so that they can grade over time. For example, when I have 30 essays to grade, I do not do that all in one sitting. The manual posting policy (formerly mute grades) allows for folks to work on grading all submissions and then releasing all scores at one time.

Generally, feedback comments AND scores are hidden before you hit "Post grades" when you use a manual posting policy. If a student goes to their grades page or to the assignment itself, they see a message that tells them the instructor is not done grading. They do NOT see the scores or feedback.

As @JakeBHarrison described, there seems to be an exception for what students see in "Recent Feedback" on the course homepage (and likely student dashboard). This inconsistency is the problem/glitch.

[JeffCampbell]

That makes sense for a workflow. Having not used that feature so am not familiar with how it hides comments. That does seem to imply that it showing up as Recent Feedback is a glitch. I would suggest reaching out to to Tech Support so they could identify that and correct it.