I would focus on making sure they have the resources to learn what they need to know. The Canvas Admin Guides is a great place to start.
When my institution switched to Canvas my department spent two weeks watching the training videos for a few hours each morning. Then it was months of figuring things out. Maybe make a quick and dirty checklist of things they need to do and know to start the next semester with links to guides.
The Beta or Test instances are copies of your live instance overwritten at different intervals (Beta, each Saturday, Test, once a month). So it wouldn't work to make them admins there as they would eventually revert back to whatever role they have in your live instance. And also, someone would need to be an admin in your live instance so they can make other's admins, as needed.
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