09-How Course Access is Managed
How Course Access is Managed
Access to a course and the content within is managed by several things, all at once!
The user’s account role , if any. This is some kind of administrative role, with permissions that can override any other restrictions.
The user’s course role (Teacher, TA, Designer, Student, Auditor, or Observer) and the setting determining his or her ability to see users enrolled in other sections of the course.
The term settings , including the term start and end date and how they apply to course roles for the courses associated with the term.
The course settings , including the course start and end date whether students can access the course before or after these dates.
The section settings , including the section start and end date and whether students can access the course before or after these dates.
The course becomes "read only" after the end of the course end or term end date and Teachers, Designers & TAs can no longer make changes like adding users to the course or changing the course dates
Roles
Account Roles
There are all sorts of custom account roles with varying levels of administrative access. As an admin, you have one of these account roles. The level of access available to a given account role is determined by the lead Canvas admin.
Course Roles
Course roles include:
Teacher: As long as the course and term are active, the teacher is essentially the admin user of the course. The teacher can access the course when it is unpublished and access all grades, assignment submissions, and more. Teachers can publish their course and course content. Some capabilities are turned off for teachers, including the ability to add people to the course in the student role or change the sections that students are assigned to. These capabilities are restricted to prevent teachers from changing things that Banner will change back. Teachers can access the course as soon as they are added to it and up until a year after the term ends.
TA: The TA can do just about everything the teacher can do except add other teachers and TAs and submit final grades for the course.
Designer: The designer can do much of what the teacher can do in terms of content management and publishing, but cannot access the gradebook or see student submissions or analytics.
Student: Students can view the course if it is published and any content items within the course that are published. Students can submit assignments, comment on discussions, view their own grades, view teacher feedback on their work, and access the course within the time the course is available, as determined by the term or course or section settings.
Auditor: The auditor role basically has all of the same permissions as the student role, but with a different name to indicate that the grade isn’t really going to be official for the auditor.
Observer: An observer cannot submit assignments or participate in the course, but can only view content and activity instructions. An observer, however, can be linked to a student in the course and view the grades and submissions and feedback for that student. This role is typically used in K-12 teaching environments for parents who wish to monitor their students’ progress. In some cases athletic advisors might use this role to monitor student athletes.
For a much more detailed list, see: https://s3.amazonaws.com/tr-learncanvas/docs/Canvas_Permissions_Course.pdf
Publishing
A course exists in a published or unpublished state. When it is unpublished, only admins, teachers, TAs, and designers can see it. Once it is published, it will appear on the course list of students, auditors, and observers in the course, and if the term, course, or section settings permit, they will be able to enter the course.
Individual content items within a course also exist in a published or unpublished state. If an individual item is unpublished within a course that is published, although a student can enter the course, he or she cannot see the content item. Item publishing can be a bit layered. For example, a canvas page might be published, but exist in a module that is unpublished. As long as the higher-level item, like the module, is unpublished, the items it contains, though published, won’t be available to students.
Files used in Canvas have the ability to be published in a manner that only allows them to be seen if somebody has a link to the file. This allows the Files section to be visible to students, but with certain files being invisible until students access them somewhere else in Canvas--typically in a test.
Analogy for publishing: House, rooms, filing cabinets
A useful way to think of how publishing works is to think of a house with rooms and cabinets, all of which can lock.
An unlocked house can still have locked rooms that people can’t enter. (The comparison would be unpublished modules.)
An unlocked room can still have a locked filing cabinet (the comparison would be unpublished content items.)
For someone to access something in a filing cabinet, the house, room, and filing cabinet all have to be unlocked.
Terms
Every course exists within a Canvas term. Terms are set up at the admin level, and most are integrated with Banner. A term can have a start and end date and can restrict access to the course, by course role, a certain amount of time before or after the term. For example, all academic terms are set to restrict student access to a course a week after the course ends. Teachers, TAs, and Designers can retain active access to the course up to a year after the term ends.
Course-level settings can be set to override term level settings as far as access is concerned.
Course Settings
Courses can also be given a start and end date, and the course can be set to control access based upon the course start and end dates rather than the term start and end dates. In other words, course settings can be made to override term settings. Course settings can also be enabled or disabled that control whether a student can see or participate in a course before it starts or after it ends.
The course becomes "read only" after the end of the term end date, or by the course end date if there is one and Teachers, Designers & TAs can no longer make changes like adding users to the course or changing the course dates
Sections
Just as course access settings can override term settings, so can section settings override course settings. A section can be given a start and end date, and access to the course can be set based upon those dates.
Concluding
A Canvas course, in addition to being published or unpublished, can be active or concluded. A concluded course is a course in a read-only state, where assignments cannot be submitted and, for teachers, content cannot be edited.
As long as a course is within its active term, course, or section dates it is active to users who are enrolled in the course. Once the end date passes, the course immediately goes into a soft-concluded, read-only state to student, auditor, and observer course roles. The term settings determine how long teachers, TAs, and designers can continue actively engaging with the course. Academic terms are set to permit active access one year after the course end date.
A course can also be hard concluded , which requires clicking the conclude this course button in the course settings. This option is rarely used and is discouraged, because it is hard to reverse. It sets all enrollments in the course to an “inactive” state that must be individually reversed if the course is to be returned to active use.
