Controlling student access to materials
Q. Do Canvas users have to be a member of the University? (For example, some college courses include non-Oxford students, and many NHS staff will need access to Canvas course components)
A. Yes, your Local Canvas Coordinator is able to use the Manage External Users tool to create an account for external users who are authorised to use Canvas for teaching and learning purposes. Once their Canvas account as been created, you will be able to enrol them in your Canvas course.
If the user does later obtain an Oxford single sign on user account, then contact canvas@it.ox.ac.uk and ask to have it merged with the former external account.
Note: Due to the complexity of, and work involved in creating and merging user Canvas accounts, it is not advisable to create 'temporary' external accounts for users who are expected to get single sign on accounts at a later stage. It is preferable to wait until they do so, which should automatically provision their account in Canvas.
Q. Can some areas of Canvas be made available to the public, e.g. we have a section called ‘What’s on’?
A. You can open up an entire Canvas course to the public: go to Settings and select 'Visibility': 'Institution'.
However, the Oxford University acceptable use policy supports the use of Canvas for award-bearing qualifications. Other information and materials should be provided via other systems, such as Mosaic (for departmental web pages) or SharePoint (for departmental intranets).
Q. Can I build Canvas courses for non-award bearing, public courses (for example, those that grant only a certificate of attendance)?
A. You can make any Canvas course ‘public’ – i.e. accessible to anyone with the URL. Working with course teams on non-award bearing courses is on the radar of the Canvas Programme team, but further discussions and approval from the Programme Board would be needed. There would be some data implications (i.e. the local course admin team would need to take on various data tasks, since such courses would not be provisioned from central University systems).
Q. Canvas courses can be set to self-enrol, providing a ‘Join this course’ button. Can a student then un-enrol themselves?
A. Yes. If a student has self-enrolled into a course, they can also un-enrol. Directions to remove yourself from a course are provided here: How do I drop a self-enrolled Canvas course? Links to an external site.
Q. Can you upload something and prevent students from downloading it? (e.g. chapters of books not yet published; lecture recordings)
A. No. Technically, a user will be able to download any materials from Canvas. Basically, material should not be uploaded to Canvas at all if there are any caveats on its use.
Q. As a teacher, can I control the release of content by setting release dates in the future when I want the material to be viewable by students ?
A. You can lock an entire Module until a date when you want it to be available to students. (Click the 'three dots' menu alongside the module heading and select Edit.) This feature applies to an entire module; it is not currently possible to lock a particular item within a module.
Although there is no timed release feature for Pages, you can restrict the visibility of folders and files in the Files tool as follows:
Select Files. Click the 'three dots' menu alongside the applicable folder or file and select Manage usage rights. Select the option Schedule student availability and enter the required dates (ensure that the dates are not in the past!):
Note that the time field is optional and if not selected it will default to 12am. After you have entered the required dates, click Save. The calendar icon now appears beside the file to indicate that it is available only during a specified time period:
Read more in the Canvas guides:
- How do I lock a module? Links to an external site.
- How do I restrict student access to folders and files? Links to an external site.
Q. Sometimes tightly licensed materials need to made available to certain sub-groups of students only. How can this be managed in Canvas?
A. Within a Canvas course, one can subdivide the students into Groups. Groups are intended to enable students to collaborate in their own 'mini Canvas area'; however, the teacher can also create pages that contain materials that will be available within the particular group only.
Note: There is no timed-release option for content within a Group. (See previous question for other options.)
Read more in the Canvas guides:
- How do I create groups via the People tab Links to an external site.?
- How do I create a new page in a group Links to an external site.?
More information on Understanding Groups is available in our Canvas@Oxford Guides.
Q. How can I make particular learning materials (content) available to certain students only?
A. Within a Canvas course, one can subdivide the students into Groups (for student-led collaboration or team work) or Sections (for tutor-led activities, such as Discussions, Announcements, Quizzes and Assignments).
At present, a tutor cannot easily provide differentiated content to certain students only. Here are some workarounds:
- Create groups to share pages of content with particular sets of students – note that students have 'edit' powers for all materials within their own group.
- Create a section-specific announcement to share documents with a particular course section.
- Create a non-graded assignment (with attachments, if necessary) and assign it to specific students.
The Canvas suppliers are working on providing a better solution to this need.
Q. Why are some of my external students not able to see or access documents shared with them via the Collaborations tool?
A. The Collaborations tool makes use of integration with Microsoft Office 365. The settings of Oxford's installation of Office 365 may cause difficulties for external students without an Oxford Single Singon (even if they are enrolled in your Canvas course). The workaround is to save and share the required documents in your own personal One Drive folder and thereafter you can continue to access them from within Canvas Collaborations.
Q. As a teacher, I want to work on building pages in my Groups area. Can these pages remain unpublished until they are ready for students to access?
A. There is no publish/unpublish feature for Pages within a Group's homepage. Unlike Pages in the course, Pages in Groups are published and viewable to all in the group as soon as they are created. The purpose of Groups is to enable student collaboration, so everyone in the group has equal permissions and can see everything that has been created.
Q. Will former students (alumni) be able to continue to access their Canvas courses , e.g. Executive Education programmes at the Business School?
A. Access to a Canvas course expires with your University access. Contact your course administrator if you have a special circumstance that requires you to have access after leaving the University.