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Canvas includes several ways to connect with your students and provide valuable feedback on their work.  Check out the tools and strategies below:

Add inline comments and annotations

For assignments where you need to target your feedback to specific areas within the submitted file, try using the DocViewer annotation tools within SpeedGrader.  You can add comments throughout the document via point, text, highlight, strikethrough, and drawing annotations.  Annotation tools are also available on the Canvas Teacher app, allowing you to grade on a tablet if desired.
 
How to:
 
Tip: If you plan to use these annotation tools for grading and feedback, consider enabling only “File Upload” in your assignment settings, and adding file type restrictions to ensure that submitted files are .  DocViewer annotation tools are not available for “Text Entry” submissions.
 

Add general feedback comments

Not every assignment may require detailed feedback through SpeedGrader’s annotation tools.  When you just need to give quick feedback on an assignment overall, or add a quick note alongside a grade, you can use the Comment tool.  You can add comments from the gradebook and within SpeedGrader, and students can view them in both places, too. 

And comments aren’t limited to just text – when using the comment tool in SpeedGrader, you can include audio and/or video, file attachments, and emojis.  There’s also a speech recognition tool built in that allows you to use speech to text (available only in Chrome browser).

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Did you know?  Students can add comments too!  Comments can be used to facilitate a private dialogue between you and the student about the assignment right alongside their submission. 

Tip: To make sure you don’t miss any comments from your students, make sure to to “Notify Immediately” for submission comments.  Students who have this setting enabled will also receive notifications whenever you add comments within their submissions.

 
 

Consider rubrics for grading and feedback

If your assignment includes a grading rubric, you can use the Rubric tool to build it right in Canvas.  Rubrics are a great way to communicate your expectations for students’ work, as well as simplify the grading and feedback process.  Rubrics can be added to assignments, discussions, and quizzes.

How to: | Add a rubric to an , ,
 

Tell students where to look for feedback

There’s nothing worse than taking the time to provide in-depth feedback on your students’ assignments only to discover at the end of the semester that they didn’t know it was there.  Make sure to tell your students which feedback tools you plan to use and how to access them from the student side.  You can consider including this information in your syllabus, in your Canvas course, or both.

Tip: Annotations in particular require a few clicks for students to view, so you may want to share with them this student guide:

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