Q: I noticed a “Student Viewed Document” timestamp in Quercus for a tutorial assignment that was due at 5:00 p.m. on February 20. It showed that the student viewed the document at 7:44 p.m. the same day. Does this mean the student could see my in-text comments before grades were released? I sometimes leave internal notes as in-text comments before finalizing my feedback, and I’m concerned about students seeing these prematurely.
A:The “Student Viewed Document” timestamp in Quercus indicates when a student opened their submission using DocViewer (the inline document viewer in SpeedGrader). It does not mean that the student saw any instructor feedback, annotations, comments, or grades. In most cases, when you see a timestamp like this (see screenshot below) after the submission time, it simply means the student reopened the submitted file, likely to confirm it uploaded correctly or appears as they intended. This viewing activity is not related to grading or feedback visibility.
Students cannot see your in-text comments, annotations, or overall feedback until grades have been posted for the assignment. Since grades have not yet been released in this case, you can be confident that the student did not see any comments you had entered.