As a faculty member who teaches a mix of online, blended, and in-person courses each semester, I’m always on the lookout for aspects of Canvas that are both useful for students and can save me time in the semester. On this Valentine’s Day (whether you love, hate, or feel neutral about the holiday. Personally, I appreciate that a horror movie is usually released around this time!), I’m thinking of a Canvas tool I love that is right there in the SpeedGrader: the Comment Library.

The Comment Library can feel a little hidden. Have you noticed that small text box icon above the comment box in SpeedGrader? I know I hadn’t at first, but that little box will take you to a Comment Library.

I won’t go through the specifics on how to set it up here because Canvas has a whole guide: How Do I Use the Comment Library in SpeedGrader?

However, I do want to discuss how and why I use it and a few “lessons learned.”

First, why? I teach writing-intensive courses, including our First-Year Composition courses. On some assignments, I realized that I leave multiple students the same sort of feedback (as early academic writers, they tend to make similar choices/decisions based on their prior experiences with writing, even when writing about different content). Instead of typing the same thing repeatedly, I created a comment in the comment library about that particular issue in writing. This way, I can select that comment when I see that issue come up. 

So, here’s the first “lesson learned”: if you have other text typed up in the comment box, it will disappear if you select a comment from your comment library! I suggest pulling your comment library comments first and then adding in any other comments you need to. I tend to pull in the comment library comment and then write another, more personalized comment as well. 

General praise: I also like to leave students comments about what they are doing well. Many of my students make thoughtful observations and points in their work, so I have a general comment I use as a template to add more specifics:

Thoughtful engagement here! I appreciate your point about [then I fill in the rest with a specific point].

Also, I still have students who tend to forget to reply to other peers on discussion boards or on VoiceThread. So, I have a comment in my comment library that says: “For this assignment to be marked complete, you need to leave two peer responses. If you come back and do that, please let me know so that I can give you credit for your work. Thank you!”

Another lesson learned: all comments save into one Comment Library, regardless of the course. That means when I go to pull up comments from the library for my First-Year Composition course, I can also see all the comments I’ve saved for my Grant Writing course, my Creative Writing course, my Professional Writing in the Age of Social Media course, and so on. Sometimes, there’s some scrolling to do! However, if you want, you can toggle on a button that will suggest your comment library comments to you as you type into the comment box. 

Sometimes, these “new” and smaller finds ease our workflow a little bit and are useful for students learning, which I’ve been getting excited about lately. Small wins, especially ones that work no matter the modality of your course, are to be celebrated. 

Something to think about: in what ways do you think the Comment Library could be useful for you in facilitating your courses? If you already use the Comment Library, what successes have you had, and/or in what ways do you use it?