Add Students, TAs, or Instructors to a Canvas Course

Adding People to Your Canvas Course

Instructors can add course associate roles (e.g., Designer and TA) to sandbox courses and organizations, but cannot add people to academic courses. All people are managed through an integration between PeopleSoft and Canvas. Academic departments are responsible for managing access to courses based on an individual's affiliation with the university.

New people are keyed into PeopleSoft by the relevant academic department's scheduler at the direction of the department chair. Once entered, PeopleSoft enrollments and instructors are typically synced every 15 minutes to Canvas.

It is important to note that an individual may only be assigned to one role per course. A person's role in one course does not affect their role in another course or their wider system access. For example, a person can be a Teacher in one course and a Designer in another course. If you have further questions about adding people to your course, please email apss@csuchico.edu.

Process Overview

The following is a non-exhaustive, descriptive example of the process for adding someone to an academic course:

1. Alice is a tutor in the Student Learning Center. As part of her job, she needs to be added to Bob's BIOL-101 course to send announcements to students.
2. Bob works with his department chair, Carol, to identify a suitable role for Alice. Because Alice only needs to be able to communicate with students, they select the Peer Mentor role.
3. Carol confirms a contractual relationship between the university and Alice.
4. Carol directs the department scheduler, Daniel, to add Alice to Bob's course.
5. Daniel enters Alice's information into PeopleSoft and assigns the Peer Mentor instructor role.
6. After several minutes, Alice logs into Canvas and notices that she's now enrolled in BIOL-101.

Available Roles in Canvas

Canvas offers several roles that determine the level of access to a course. At Chico State, the following roles are available in Canvas:

• Student - grants access to participate in the course, including submitting assignments, discussion posts, etc.
• Teacher - grants full access to the course, including the ability to create, edit, and delete content. Users with this role can view and edit all student grades in the course.
• TA - grants access to create and edit content in the course but cannot delete content. Users with this role can view and edit all student grades in the course. This role can manage all course settings.
• Designer - grants access to create and edit content in the course but cannot delete content. This role can manage all course settings. Cannot view or edit grades.
• Grader - grants access to view course content and the gradebook. Users with this role can view and edit all student grades in the course. This role can manage all course settings.
• Faculty Peer Evaluator - grants the same access as Student.
• Peer Mentor - grants read-only access to the course and the ability to send messages to the entire class. Cannot view or edit grades.

For a detailed explanation of each role and its permissions, please see our Canvas roles documentation.

Sharing Course Content with Other Instructors

If you want to share a given module, assignment, or other content with another instructor, you can do so using Canvas' Send To feature. For more information on how to use this feature, please see the Canvas help page, How do I send a module to another instructor?.

Alternatively, you can export your course and upload the course file to a shared storage space for another instructor. For instructions on how to export your course, please see How do I export a Canvas course?.

You are also able to add people to your sandbox courses in Canvas where there are no student enrollments.

For more information about sharing content with others in Canvas, check out our Sharing Content in Canvas guide.

Adding Faculty Observers to Your Course

Observing faculty may need to be added to online courses for class observations. The Faculty Peer Evaluator role is the appropriate Canvas role to use for these class observations. Use the process above to request people to be added to your course.