“Feedback Machine” is our goofy code name for a yet unnamed feature of Canopy, 11trees solution that transforms Canvas LMS data to help instructors best engage students. Feedback Machine addresses a core problem with Canvas: the student feedback experience.
Educators spend hours crafting feedback for students in Canvas’ Speedgrader but don’t necessarily realize the effort students must go to view and digest that feedback. We also believe the feedback process has many opportunities for improvement. Feedback Machine represents our first steps towards creating much greater learning value from this age-old challenge.
If you’d like early access to experiment with Feedback Machine in Spring 2025, use the interest form below to share your email.
Try Feedback Machine!
All you need to try the instructor experience are:
- A secure Canvas token from your Canvas account (find out how).
- The base URL of your Canvas instance (school.instructure.com).
Why try?
- Get a quick look at the future of feedback in Canvas.
- Gain a great, free tool for student conferences and other scenarios where you need to quickly see ALL the content related to an assignment submission in Canvas.
Feedback Machine does not collect any data. We don’t ask you for your email or school. Just that you consider sharing your feedback and joining us on a journey to make the student experience with feedback far more valuable.
Feedback Machine unifies the assignment prompt, document markup, overall comments, rubric scores, and grade into a coherent experience for students that, at most, is two clicks from any Canvas page. Feedback Machine does not store any student data outside of Canvas. It simply processes Canvas data to create a better student experience. In the screenshot below we can see:
- The assignment prompt (what was I asked to write about again?)
- The student document, if one was submitted, with markup and comments clearly visible. Soon, Feedback Machine will pull all comments into a column to the right of the document, highlighting the specific comment as the student hovers over it in the document.
- Overall Assignment Comments, if any.
- The rubric, rubric selections, and any comments.
- The grade.
Here’s a screenshot to illustrate:
Big deal, you think. Okay – save a few clicks, make the feedback prettier. Useful, but not crucial.
But what if:
- The learner can message their instructor, using Canvas secure messaging, from the experience to ask questions.Â
- The instructor can opt to include a simple survey, or other acknowledgement of feedback receipt, tied to a gradebook column. When the student reviews the feedback the gradebook column updates, creating accountability and a small incentive.
Suddenly feedback becomes, potentially, a far more active and accountable process.
Most of us have experienced handing back assignments or exams only to watch students turn to the last page, check the grade, and toss the hardcopy in the trash on the way out of class. We hope you’ll consider joining us as we work to infuse the feedback process with more value, at least inside the Canvas LMS. Share your email address below and gain access to early versions of Feedback Machine, that you can connect to a Canvas sandbox, and preferred early bird licensing for your institution.