Canvas needs the same Speedgrader tools available for Canvas Discussions. Highlighting, point annotation, text comments, strikethrough, area annotations, etc. This would make instructor feedback easier.
Hello @KEdwards8 -
I understand the request, but I do not think it is practical to implement.
The annotation tools in SpeedGrader were built for reviewing static documents where feedback can be anchored to a specific location in a file. Discussion posts are not documents. They are dynamic HTML content displayed within an evolving conversation thread. Features such as highlighting, strikethroughs, point annotations, and area comments depend on content remaining fixed, which is fundamentally different from how discussions are stored and rendered.
Discussions also introduce technical and accessibility challenges that do not exist with document annotation. Posts may be edited, quoted in replies, viewed on different devices, or displayed differently depending on screen size and browser. Ensuring annotations remain accurately attached to the intended text under all of those conditions would require a purpose-built system rather than a simple extension of the existing SpeedGrader tools.
I also question whether the development effort would be justified. Discussions are designed to facilitate conversation rather than document review. While document annotation is valuable for essays, reports, and uploaded assignments, the feedback model for discussions is already centered on dialogue within the thread. Building and maintaining a separate annotation framework for discussion content would likely require significant engineering resources for a use case that overlaps with existing discussion feedback methods.
For those reasons, I suspect this would be a substantial architectural project rather than a straightforward feature enhancement.
That written, permit me to point out where to post feature enhancement ideas. These are submitted via the roadmap at the link below. Canvas Collaborative Roadmap - Instructure Community
May I also point out that 3rd party tools that integrate with Canvas can provide the markup functionality you are seeking. For example, Perusall. But that tool is conceptually different from a discussion board. Perusall is built around commenting directly on content such as a pdf, while discussion boards are built around replying to posts. In Perusall, conversations are attached to specific text, images, or video timestamps. In a discussion board, conversations are attached to the post itself.
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