This is also occurring in the fact that if you create an assignment that is NOT going in the gradebook, you can not leave any comments on it. What if you just ask the students to respond in the text box? What's the point of having a text box response area if you can't leave comments in it?

@Elaine Bregman I realized I didn't answer your other question. The default was set to however the school had it before for the grade since the two were tied together since this means the same experience for your users. If you had grades visible before, then comments were as well. If you had grades not visible then comments weren't.

they can be turned on/off globally in grading period setup where you can globally set whether grades show or not to different roles, and you can (again same as grades) designate whether you want teachers to be allowed to also set their preference at the gradebook level or if you want to disable that for them. If it's enabled for teachers then they will see that option in their gradebook settings where they also set the grade visibility.

@Angela Where do I go to turn on/off comments?

Hi @Candace Chesler I apologize for the confusion or my improper English maybe. When I said it will not be at the comment level I was saying that unfortunately no it isn't down at that low of a level where they can pick per comment which ones show or not. I was saying i.e. they can cherry pick which ones...as further explaining of that use case. But the key part of that was 'it will not be at the comment level'. Sorry again for the confusion. If you want to start a new idea for comment level settings to separate that as a specific request we can always consider that for future enhancement.

Angela - you mention that teachers can cherry pick which assignment comments they want to publish. I alerted my teachers to this change - and so far today none of us can figure out where to find this setting. All we see is the previous settings in Gradebook Display Options which refers to ALL comments. Where should I instruct my teachers to find this new option?

@Angela Will comments default to published or unpublished? I am hoping unpublished.

Hi @Alex Orlebeke, it will not be at the comment level i.e. they can cherry pick which assignment comments they want to publish and which they don't. However, if teachers aren't using that for comments to the student and aren't comfortable having them visible they can go into their gradebook settings tomorrow morning (we release usually between 5 and 6 am EST) and hide the comments. Admins will also be able to set that same as they can for grades themselves at the grading period level.

Or is it just any comment in the Gradebook are automatically visible to students once saved? There's no 'publish' checkbox?

It's possible that up until now that teachers have been using the comment functionality for their own eyes only. Given that comments are now visible without needing gradebook access, how do we ensure that only the comments teachers want to display are seen by students?

This should be going in tomorrow's release! If the student views the assignment details they will see comments under where the grade displays (both when assignment grade visibility is enabled or disabled).

This is the idea I've been trying to push especially with COVID-19 and online learning. The only feedback we have for student work in the younger grade is through the assignments. We don't currently have the Gradebook, so we can't use that feature. Annotating works ok but is very difficult for parents to navigate and we are doing a lot of video submissions which cannot be annotated. PLEASE consider this!!!

I think what would be helpful is distinguishing between a "grade" comment and an "assignment" comment. Having a comment related to explaining their grade should show up in the gradebook. However, if a teacher wants to leave a comment related to the content of the students assignment, it should show up on the assignment page. I don't see any reason why ALL of the information (grades and comments) couldn't be shown in both places.

This would be helpful - our teachers would like to not be bound to opening gradebooks for students to see comments. 

This is a real problem at our school; N-8 do not use letter grades, and rely primarily on text-based feedback.  We've had to create work-arounds in order to use the grade book for feedback.

I agree -- not only would this be useful, but it would make more sense pedagogically -- as engaging the feedback on an assignment is really the most important part of the learning process for the student. Ideally the feature would have a dialogue so a teacher could respond to an assignment and then the student can make a response back. Haiku implements their assignments in such a way and I know teachers have found that tool extremely enriching to the learning process.

We would really find this useful... please consider implementing!