Missing Highlights - Teacher Comments Not Anchored To Text In Student Essay

When the student and instructor select text and create comments, there are hidden "anchors" placed in the text. If these anchors get deleted during editing, then the comments are no longer attached to highlighted text but they are still visible in the comment sidebar.

This can happen normally while the student is editing, and it is typically not a problem because they have already seen the highlighted text, and they are in the process of making appropriate changes.

It becomes problematic if the student makes large sweeping changes that break multiple anchors. For example, if they were to select an entire paragraph that had several comments attached to it, delete the paragraph, and then retype it, that would break all the anchors in the paragraph. If the student clicks on those detached comments, they will not cause the associated text in the essay to be highlighted.

You can encourage your students to be a bit more conservative in their editing, or simply to review all your comments and plan carefully prior to making large changes.