Canvas submission details screen displays line breaks

Back in January I discovered that assignment comments lose their page break formatting in the feedback viewer for students on the Instructure Canvas platform. Thus if the instructor enters a comment with line breaks in the comment:



Then the above instructor comment appears to the student in the feedback dialog as:

All of the line breaks have been lost. Note that the above dialog box is accessed by students who click on the Recent Feedback in the Card View of their Dashboard. The Card View is the default view for both faculty and students.


Clicking on a Recent Feedback item opens the Assignments screen for that assignment.


On the far right is the View Feedback button that opens the unformatted Feedback dialog box.


For reference, the address of this student assignment screen is the same as the assignment address that the instructor sees. 

There is, however, another view of feedback comments that I only just saw today for the first time. 
In the upper right hand corner of the student Dashboard is a three dot vertical ellipsis menu.


This menu provides access for students to three different Dashboard views.


If the student chooses the List View, then the student sees course assignments in a list view. To see prior submissions the student will have to scroll up - the list opens to upcoming assignments. Note that prior assignments do not appear until the student attempts to scroll up, prior assignments only load after scrolling up.


Clicking on "Show 1 completed item" displays the title of the completed item. Clicking on that title takes the student to a screen I have not seen before, the Submission Details screen.


Although I worked on the issue only very briefly, I could not find a way to access this screen from the earlier Assignments screen. From what I have been able to see, the feedback on the right retains line feeds (paragraph breaks). As far as I was able to determine the only way to access this particular screen was through the List View option on the Dashboard, a view option available to students. 

The student can return to the Card View from the three dot vertical ellipsis menu on the upper right of the screen in the List View. 

If one is able to do so, there are strong benefits to having students demonstrate to you their Canvas workflow and what they see as they interact with assignments and feedback. Some students work from the Modules, some from the Calendar, others from To Do list or Syllabus. Seeing Canvas from the students' point of view provides insights into how to better organize course material and assignment feedback. 

Post-script: I have confirmed that the Submission Details feedback dialog box retains line breaks. 

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