For this week’s edition of Teaching Tips Thursdays, we explored five features of Canvas that can help instructors provide timely, consistent, specific, balanced, and actionable feedback.

Feature #1: Quiz Question Feedback

Research shows that providing frequent quizzes with timely feedback improves students’ understanding of concepts. Did you know that you can add feedback for answer choices when you are building a Canvas quiz question? Consider building feedback into your quizzes and allowing students to take low-stakes quizzes multiple times so that they can take a quiz, get instant feedback, then use that feedback to do better the second or third time around.

Canvas Guides: See guides for creating different types of quiz questions in the Canvas Instructor Guide: Quizzes

Adding feedback for answer choices in a Canvas Quizzes

Feature #2: Rubrics

Canvas rubrics are a powerful tool that can help you provide more consistent feedback. Rubrics help communicate exactly what you expect students to do and how you will evaluate their work. While they take time to create, they can make grading easier and faster!

Canvas Guides: How do I add a rubric to an assignment? and How do I use a rubric to grade submissions in SpeedGrader?

A rubric in SpeedGrader in Canvas

Feature #3: Annotations in DocViewer in SpeedGrader

You can use the annotation tools in DocViewer in SpeedGrader to annotate directly on students’ assignment submissions and provide specific feedback on their work in context.

Canvas Guide: How do I add annotated comments in student submissions using DocViewer in SpeedGrader?

Adding a point annotation in SpeedGrader in Canvas

Feature #4: Media Comments in SpeedGrader

Media comments in SpeedGrader can save you the time of typing out your comments and make your feedback feel more personal and balanced to students.

Canvas Guide: How do I leave feedback comments for student submissions in SpeedGrader?

Adding a media comment in SpeedGrader

Feature #5: “Message Students Who”

The “Message Students Who” feature in Canvas makes it easy to share actionable feedback with students who haven’t submitted an assignment yet or who scored higher or lower than a specific number of points.

Canvas Guide: How do I send a message to students from the Gradebook?

"Message Students Who" in Canvas

Watch the recording to see these five features in action!

From Feedback to Feedforward

While feedback happens after students have completed a task, feedforward is a strategy of setting students up for success before they begin a task by providing them with clear instructions and modeling skills for them. What are some ways that you can use Canvas to provide feedforward?

  • Take advantage of the opportunity that the Rich Content Editor offers to provide guidance and resources for students in the instructions of an assignment, quiz, discussion, etc.
  • Use rubrics to communicate your criteria and standards for assessments.

A road sign that says "Success Ahead"

Resources