To access a Canvas course and interact with the course materials, staff and students need to be enrolled with a specific course role.   

Course roles have different permissions; these can be broadly separated between Student and Teacher. 

Role Description
Teacher For academic staff delivering teaching on this course, with full access to all course features
Module Admin For staff supporting course delivery who need full access to all course features
Designer For staff supporting the design and creation of course content
TA For Teaching Assistants supporting academic staff delivering course content
Marker For staff assisting in marking, no access to edit content
Module Auditor For staff needing to view course content and grades
Module Content Viewer For staff needing to view course content (no access to grades)
Student For students participating in the course (on Curriculum courses this role is automatically assigned to students registered on the module 'for credit')
Non-Credit Student For students needing to access the course but not participating for credit (on Curriculum courses this role is automatically assigned to students registered on the module 'Not for credit')
Observer This is a default Canvas role that is not currently used at Imperial

The ability to enrol users is available to Teachers and Module Admins.    

Below we look at the different processes in which staff and students can be enrolled on Canvas courses.  

Please contact your Faculty Ed Tech team for information on the use of this tool for teaching, learning and assessment. 

For further help and support in enrolling users to Canvas courses, please visit the help materials provided by the product vendor.

While it is possible to enrol yourself with multiple roles on a Canvas course this is not recommended. Having multiple roles can cause permissions conflicts and result in errors.

Tabs

Automatic enrolment

For Canvas Curriculum Courses, students will be enrolled based on the information held in Banner (the Imperial student record system). 

  • Students who are taking the module for credit will be enrolled as Students
  • Students who are taking the module not for credit will be enrolled as Non-Credit Students

Canvas courses are automatically created for all modules in Banner.  To 'opt-out' a Canvas Curriculum Course for a Module in Banner please see the Integration Partner Flags page.

Enrolments will occur within 24 hours of a user being associated with the module in Banner.  You should not enrol a student to a Canvas course manually if you are expecting the enrolment to come from Banner, as this can cause issues with Banner being able to manage the enrolment in future updates to the enrolment status etc.

Canvas Curriculum courses are created as unavailable to students by default. Please see our help materials on course availability to enable access to curriculum courses.  

Any issues with student enrolments should be checked in Banner with Faculty/Departmental administrators or by contacting Registry. 

Manual Enrolment

Members of staff and students can be added to a Canvas course manually. 

For Canvas Curriculum courses the enrolment process of students will occur automatically (you should not attempt to add them manually). However, staff will need to be added.  

To enrol individual users onto a Canvas course, follow these instructions: 

  1. Navigate to the course you wish to enrol users onto. 
  2. Select People from the left hand menu 
  3. Click the + People button on the top right of the screen. 
  4. You can enter as many email addresses (full imperial email address e.g. joe.smith@imperial.ac.uk), Login ID's (username@ic.ac.uk)  or SIS ID's (Imperial CID numbers) you wish, separated by commas or a new line. 
  5. Choose the Role you want to enrol these accounts with. 
  6. For the majority of courses it will not be necessary to select a section to enrol to, this will only apply to cross-listed courses or courses that have been setup with multiple sections to accommodate a specific use case.
  7. Select Next to check the accounts you have entered are all valid, if any are not correct please click 'Back' and then remove or correct them. If all are valid, click 'Next' and then 'Add Users'.
Unless there are specific requirements the checkbox for 'Can interact with users in their section only' should not be selected. Checking this box will prevent those enrolments from seeing enrolments from other sections or marking work submitted by users in other sections of that course.

For further help and support in enrolling users to Canvas courses, please visit the help materials provided by the product vendor. 

Single Course Batch Enrolment

Large numbers of users can be enrolled in batch, either onto a single Canvas course or onto multiple courses. 

Batch enrolling on a single course can be completed by anyone enrolled on the course with the Teacher or Module Admin role (please see the Manual Enrolment tab on this page). Enrolling users across multiple courses will need to be processed by ICT (please see the Multiple Course Batch Enrolment tab on this page). 

 

Multiple Course Batch Enrolment

An individual user or a cohort of multiple users can be enrolled on to multiple courses. These enrolments are carried out on request by ICT.   

To request batch enrolment across multiple Canvas courses, submit a .txt file via ASK Service Now containing the following column headings and data:  

  • Canvas Course SIS ID(s) 
  • CID(s) 
  • Course role(s) of the users (see role names above)
  • Status

E.g.

00001.202010,00000001,teacher,active

00001.202010,00000002,student,active

00003.202030,00000001,teacher,active

You can find the Course SIS ID for a Canvas course by clicking on the Settings link in the left hand menu of a course. 

Note: The full course code often does not appear correctly in .csv files. To rectify this, please submit Canvas bulk enrolment requests as a .txt file. You do not need to make any changes to the formatting to do this. 

ICT will not amend the data provided in a submitted file. Batch enrolments will only be accepted if the information is accurate and supplied in the correct format.  

Self-enrolment
It is recommended to engage with ICT before you start designing a course that requires self enrolment, there are specific design requirements that must be met in order for self enrolment courses to function as expected.

Canvas courses can have Self-Enrolment for students. This option is useful for open courses that do not have a set cohort of students. Anyone needing to participate in the course as a student will need to search for the course in the Canvas Catalogue and enrol themselves. 

To set Self Enrolment for a course please contact the ICT Service Desk to setup the course in the Canvas Catalog.

You should provide clear instructions for students if you would like them to use this method, including how to find the self-enrolment course. 

Note: Staff are required to be enrolled manually. Self-Enrolment only adds users as students to a Canvas course.