Giving Others Course Access
Faculty may wish to provide access to a Canvas course to other instructors, administrators or staff to a course for a variety of reasons.
Official enrollments are handled automatically. There is no need to add instructors or students who are already assigned/enrolled in a course.
Official Courses
- Students and faculty will automatically be added to Canvas courses within one hour of their official enrollment in a section.
- IMPORTANT! Adding guests or visitors to a scheduled course is a FERPA violation. Instead, consider making a development course and importing content into it to share with those who need access.
- Please contact TMI with questions about providing an unenrolled user access to an official course.
Development Courses
An instructor may add other instructors (or administrators) to a Canvas course in order to provide access to view or copy content from the course, collaborate on course development, or just browse the course.
Whether or not the other instructor can make changes to the course depends on the role they are assigned when added.
Summary Of Roles
Student: Can only access content available to students, including restrictions based on availability and lock dates, Publish status, etc. User will appear as a student to all other students. Faculty are prohibited from adding students to courses in Canvas, as this occurs automatically based on registration information.
Teacher: Full course access with complete editing capabilities. User will appear as an instructor to students in the course. Generally, additional instructors should NOT be added to a course unless they are going to be actively engaged with the content and students.
Designer: Similar to Teacher, will full editing capabilities. No access to view/edit Grades and student information. This role is useful for adding colleagues to assist with course development.
TA: “Teaching Assistant” with limited access to create and edit course content, including some information protected by FERPA.
Librarian: Reserved for placement of Library staff in specific courses.
SI/Embedded Support: Reserved for specialized support staff, such as Supplemental Instruction, CAS, DSPS, and other assistive services.
Faculty Visitor: Read-only access to all areas of published and unpublished course content. This role is useful for adding colleagues or evaluators to examine content in a development course with no enrollments. No editing capabilities.
Observer: Read-only access to all published course content, including the Syllabus, Announcements and Module items. User does not have the option to post or submit. Grades tool is hidden. NOT available for officially scheduled courses.
- See: Current Canvas course permissions for officially scheduled courses*
*permissions may vary for unofficial/development courses - See: Complete documentation of Canvas Course Role Permissions
How To Add a User
- In the course, click People
- Click +People
- Enter the user’s butte.edu email address
- Choose the desired role (see details above)
- Click Next
- Confirm the user
(NOTE: If multiple accounts are listed, choose the one with the Institution labeled “Butte College”) - click Add Users
The user will receive an email invitation to join the course, and an alert will appear on their Dashboard in Canvas. They must accept the invitation to access the course.