[ARCHIVED] Adding a staff member to a past course

[DilaniGedera]

Hi there, 

It looks like we can't add a staff member to a past Canvas course. For various reasons (it may be that a colleague is taking over a new course, and needs access to previous materials, or needs to see how the course has been taught over multiple iterations), it is an important function. 

Can someone help with this query? 

[dtod]

Look at course dates. One solution if you don't want to make the course available is to add a section with course dates that work and add the staff member to the section.

[trondsenjd]

If the course has already been closed/concluded, you can have an Admin re-open the course by going to course settings, change the 'Participation' from Term to Course, then set a course end date in the future. This will allow you to add people to the course again.

If you don't want to leave the course open (e.g. change the participation back to Term so it's closed again), you have to make sure the people you add have accepted the course invitation before closing, otherwise they won't be able to get in. To cheat a little, you can add them, Act As them and accept the course invite, then go ahead and close the course.

Or, as dtod said, create a new section to the course and add them there.

[KimberlyBavis]

We often will make a copy of the course for FERPA purposes and then the faculty member can be added to the copy and not have access to student data.

[ashley_hardesty]

The easiest way is to create a .csv file that can be imported into Canvas, using the Admin SIS Import tool.

Create a .csv that contains the Course ID, the User ID, and the role:

---

"Course_ID","User_ID","Role","Status"
"45593","160131","Teacher","active"

The first line is the header of the csv file.

The 2nd line contains the Course ID (45593), the User ID (160131), the Role (Teacher), and the status to make this entry (active).

Go to your Admin page, click SIS Import, select Choose File and browse to your .csv file.  Click Process Data.

Eventually, you'll do this enough times to want to create a batch file that creates the .csv file for you:

@Echo off

REM add-a-person-to-a-course.bat [SIS_userid] [course ID] [Role]

REM next line needed so we can use the variable within the for loop, otherwise, it is only sent once when the Batch file was started
SETLOCAL ENABLEDELAYEDEXPANSION

rem create a starting userid variable file with -1 in it
echo -1 >userid.var

if "%3%" == "" goto ErrEnd
cls
echo ==========================
echo  ADD A PERSON TO A COURSE
echo ==========================
echo.
echo This script will build a .csv file that can be manually
echo uploaded into Canvas, to ADD a person to a course.
echo EXAMPLE: to add user 314204 to course 45004, as a TA:
echo          add-a-person-to-a-course.bat 314204 45004 TA
echo.
echo          %1 is the SIS User ID
echo          %2 is the Course ID
echo          %3 is the Role

REM We now have all the values we need -- the user id, the course, and the Role
REM Build the enroll-courseID.csv file here...
echo "Course_ID","User_ID","Role","Status"> enroll-%2.csv
echo "%2","%1","%3","active">> enroll-%2.csv

Echo.
Echo Please upload enroll-%2.csv to Canvas using the Admin SIS Import page.
Echo.
type enroll-%2.csv

goto End

:ErrEnd
Echo.
Echo Syntax Error: add-a-person-to-a-course [SIS user id] [Course ID] [Role]
Echo Example: add-a-person-to-a-course.bat 304482 45004 TA
Echo.
goto end

:End