I was frustrated today when I came to grade an assignment I had set up with a rubric. I've been using that particular assignment/rubric for several years, with no issue, copying my Canvas courses from semester to semester. Even better, I had crafted some great comments for students, multiples of whom tend to make the same errors every year.
As I began grading, I clicked on "View Rubric". My comments from previous classes were available for use, but there was no "box" to insert a grade. I looked at all sorts of settings but couldn't find a way to add a numerical score along with one of my carefully crafted comments. I contacted Canvas support chat (Jamie M.). They found a fix for me by doing the following: "under assignment settings, I'll write free-form comments when assessing students - if you disable this setting on the rubrics, it should resolve the issue".
I did this and yes, I can now choose a score for the assignment and I can write a comment BUT all of my "saved" comments are unavailable! If I want to reuse comments then I won't be able to also score the assignment.
Here's the excerpt from my conversation with Jamie M:
Jamie M (1/30/2026, 12:20:38 PM): Upon review, saving and reusing comments option is only available when the “I’ll write free-form comments when assessing students” setting is enabled for the rubric on the assignment.
Samantha (1/30/2026, 12:23:14 PM): Huh. Please tell your developers that this is a downgrade from the previous form of rubric commenting. I did love to reuse my comments. Now I'll have to re-write them for every student, or switch screens to do copy and paste from, e.g. Word to Canvas.
Jamie M (1/30/2026, 12:24:53 PM): I understand your point Samantha and I also agree that it will be helpful if that is also available even when i’ll write free-form comments when assessing students is not enabled.
Developers please take note. My grading workload will be significantly increased by this change to the rubric comments. Why change something that was working well?
Apologies if I've posted this in the wrong place. This is my first time in the "Instructure Community"
