Navigating back to comments made in Google Assignments under Canvas

Canvas does not post comments made in Google Assignments under Google LTI 1.3 back into Canvas and as such the comments do not appear on the Dashboard or in other places. The following screens are courtesy of a student and are screen captures made during a Zoom session.

To see comments made for Google Assignments accessed from Canvas, students have to navigate back to the Google Assignment to see those comments. Worse, from some of the logical places to access those comments, students do not wind up at the screen that displays the Google Assignments embedded window. Trying to navigate back to a returned assignment linked from the Dashboard as being a recently returned assignment does not appear to work and leaves one at the following screen.

The preview window for the assignment will not display the assignment. The preview window only displays uploaded file types for submissions via uploads. Notice too that the comments are blank: those would be the comments that would have been made for an uploaded assignment in Canvas. There ARE comments for this assignment, but they remain down in Google Assignments. There is apparently a way from here to the Google Assignments. From what I inferred via Zoom, the student can apparently click on the black header "3.4 Shape of the distribution histogram homework" title and that is a link to the window with the Google Assignments subwindow. I could be mistaken and perhaps the student actually clicked on the blue link above.

Wherever they did actually click, the result was screen that loads the Google Assignments subwindow. Here the comments can be seen if the student scrolls down in the subwindow and the file can be accessed. 

Clicking on the linked "Your files" opens up the submitted assignment, seen above.

While editing occurs in the file, submission occurs from where the subwindow is. Bear in mind that the file has opened in a new tab.

The student then taught me that the easier way to get at the subwindow is to start from the Assignments screen in Canvas.

The complication with this approach is that the assignments do not show whether or not they have been completed, submitted, or marked. The student has to know which assignments they submitted and has to hope that the instructor has marked them in a timely manner. Clicking on an assignment in the Assignments screen does appear to directly access the window in which the Google Assignment subwindow appears. 

Here the subwindow is still loading on a slow and congested home ADSL line here in the islands.

Now the subwindow has loaded. The student can scroll down to see the comments further below in the subwindow. On the left one can see that the students is in the Assignments area in Canvas. 

The student kindly took me on a tour of Canvas. I learned that the calendar might also be able to access an assignment in the screen that includes the Google Assignment subwindow. I also learned that the gradebook has "What if" capabilities for the students as seen on the right above. 

I now realize that students were probably not seeing the comments I was making. Another takeaway from this is that the comments are not visible in the same screen as the homework, so the comments have to provide context including the answer the students gave on the homework. 

All in all the integration of Google Assignments via the Google LTI 1.3 into Canvas is academically tenuous and rather incomplete, potentially quite problematic for students who are less comfortable with technology. The alternatives would be either to put all data and questions directly into the description field for an assignment, or use a shared file that the students have to make a copy of before using. Both approaches have the downside that submission would be via upload. It is unclear to me at this time as to whether a student can cross-load from the college G Suite drive to Canvas. They probably cannot cross-load from their own Google Drive as the Google LTI 1.3 linkage appears to be only to the college G Suite drive. In addition, the Android Canvas Student app does not appear to have this option thus on a mobile phone the student has to download the completed homework to their phone and then upload from the downloads folder on their phone. 

The failure of Google Assignments comments to be surfaced in Canvas and the inability to see work and comments in one screen are serious detriments to delivering effective learning. Changing the delivery and submission method now, however, would be asking the students to switch canoes mid-ocean. That said, the gain may be worth the pain.