Nearly unusable for grading
I loved this app as a busy graduate student. It really helped streamline my grading. However, with the most recent update it is now nearly unusable.
When using speed grader in landscape orientation the left 3 or so inches are completely unresponsive to touch. This includes the annotation button, which I use a lot.
When using the rubric to grade each question on an assignment, I no longer know whether the grade for each question will be remembered or whether it will be gone the next time I load the app. This makes it hard to trust the automatically assigned total grade for the assignment, which wastes my time with double grading and double checking.
Also, once I’ve used the rubric or assigned a grade for one student’s assignment, I can no longer swipe to view the next student’s assignment. I have to exit the grading screen, scroll through the student roster to find where I left off grading, then select the next student and wait for the grader to reload. So much wasted time!
Finally, and maybe this is an Apple problem, I could find nowhere to report issues. Absolutely no feedback option in the app or in the App Store. Besides leaving this review.
When using speed grader in landscape orientation the left 3 or so inches are completely unresponsive to touch. This includes the annotation button, which I use a lot.
When using the rubric to grade each question on an assignment, I no longer know whether the grade for each question will be remembered or whether it will be gone the next time I load the app. This makes it hard to trust the automatically assigned total grade for the assignment, which wastes my time with double grading and double checking.
Also, once I’ve used the rubric or assigned a grade for one student’s assignment, I can no longer swipe to view the next student’s assignment. I have to exit the grading screen, scroll through the student roster to find where I left off grading, then select the next student and wait for the grader to reload. So much wasted time!
Finally, and maybe this is an Apple problem, I could find nowhere to report issues. Absolutely no feedback option in the app or in the App Store. Besides leaving this review.
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Latest update is absolute garbage
Can’t swipe between homework once it’s annotated. Unbelievable.
Frustrated, sad, and inconvenienced
This app is generally very frustrating. It’s completely different than how Canvas functions on my computer such as, the speedgrader function is frustrating when leaving a comment (it doesn’t let you scroll up in the comment nicely and I like to leave detailed comments so that’s annoying), it doesn’t have any options to change assignments or editing modules, like adjusting prerequisites or publishing things. But perhaps the most annoying part of this app is when I get one notification and I get five notifications for that same notification. So, if I get a notification that X student submitted X assignment, I get that same notification five different times on my iPhone. I’ve tried editing settings in my iPhone, editing settings in the app itself, and I can’t seem to figure out how to stop this problem. It’s just generally more a hassle to have it than it’s worth.
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Crashes and slowness outweigh the grading benefits
I started using the app when a colleague told me how much better Speed Grader is on the app. Speed Grader is better on the app, but there are so many other problems that the benefits are lost. The app crashes constantly. Luckily, you don’t lose work done, but the time it takes to reboot and get back to your place is typically 1-2 minutes lost. The app also glitches routinely, sometimes flashing the same screen over and over again. The default pages are totally bizarre, sending you to the same old assignment every time you click the “Assignments” tab. Home Screen is not like online. Overall, not convinced that this is worth the trouble.
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Limited functionality
When editing an assignment, the app won’t let you select the time that it’s due. Instead, it defaults to the same hour and minutes as when you’re setting it. Say I’m editing an assignment today to be due tomorrow and right now it’s 1:15 pm. Then the assignment will be due tomorrow at 1:15 and the app doesn’t provide the option to edit. This doesn’t work for my purposes.
A more general issue is the user unfriendly navigation. At this point, many of us teachers have been trained to set up a page as the Front Page, not to mention that Canvas calls it that too. So why on Earth is the Front Page not the first thing students see when they login? Too many clicks to get to there.
A more general issue is the user unfriendly navigation. At this point, many of us teachers have been trained to set up a page as the Front Page, not to mention that Canvas calls it that too. So why on Earth is the Front Page not the first thing students see when they login? Too many clicks to get to there.
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Crashes every few minutes
A piece of junk. Crashes while grading every few minutes. Then have to swipe through dozens of students to come back to where it crashed. Too bad my institution uses this buggy junk.
Wish this had group functionality
Works well, but lacks good interface for assignments grafing and can’t understand why the app distegards groups
The app crashes while marking too often
The app will crash randomly, at approximately 10% chance. There are no other apps running, device (iPad) has sufficient space. Please please fix it because every time it crashes, have to wait till the whole stack is loaded again.
Using Teacher App
It works well especially for marking assignments. However, I noticed the downloaded assignment occupy a lot of storage on my iPad. To free up space, I had to delete the app with data and reinstall.
Pretty good with one really annoying feature
I use this app and generally like it. Performance has been pretty stable with a few times where upgrades screwed up the works briefly, but contact with Canvas straightened things out pretty soon. There is one thing the app does, though, that drives me bananas. They wanted it to be a “speedgrader”, so they’ve made it so that the slightest flick allows you to quickly and effortlessly move from one student to another. I don’t know about others, but this feature seriously screws me from time to time. I believe it’s important to give the students substantial feedback on their work. So I will write a rather long comment - but midway through find I need to scroll to another part of the student’s submission to finish making my point. It’s at that point that, if I don’t really carefully just scroll straight down or up, but accidentally scroll slightly right or left, that the app moves me to another student, and my long comment is lost. I have to go back and rewrite it. I can’t tell you how many times that has happened and it just doubles my work every time. I really would rather it take a little more effort to get from one student to another if it would mean I’m not having to rewrite my comments so often. Thanks for considering that tweak, Canvas!
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