[ARCHIVED] What are your thoughts on an expanded observer role?

[kristin_bayless]

We're a mid-size K12 district.  For a while now, we've had a need for classroom support to have access to student work to make comments, but who should not have access rights to change grades.  For example, we have outside experts who work in classrooms with STEM students (e.g. Python Programming) who need to be able to see submitted work and comment on it, but they can not have any rights to the grades.  The same goes for classroom staff assistants.  We appreciate the ability to pair observers to individual students, but often need the expanded observer role to work for all students in the course.

Does anyone have a way to address this?  Having the teacher pair each student individually isn't a good option for us and neither is coming up with ad hoc enrollment files.  If you've figured out a course-role with permission settings that gives access to work without being able to change grades, would love to hear about it!  If you'd like this as a feature request or know of a previous feature request on this, please reply back.

Thanks!

[debeeker]

Perhaps the real need is an added column to whatever role is assigned that the student/participant sees. By default could be teacher, observer etc. But an option to put some other role/designation that the student sees would be super useful. In our case we combine labs with the lecture so we have professors, lab instructors, discussion leaders and secretaries, all assigned as instructor or co-instructor because they all must access the grade book, send messages etc. In addition the lab coordinator also gets assigned as teacher or co-instructor based on the whims of our secretaries. Having a column that would say "Lab Instructor", "Course Instructor", Lecturer, Discussion Leader or whatever the course professor wants would be extremely useful and would cut way down on students emailing/contacting the wrong person because everyone is listed as "Instructor".

In the same vein, perhaps some of the rights should be designated by the course professor - he could choose to allow specific rights to be assigned to a given role limited by what is appropriate for the course - entering final grades should still be the responsibility of the course professor or their proxy. Trying to define specific rights to fixed roles is somewhat futile. Everyone does things a little differently.

[kristin_bayless]

 @debeeker 

I appreciate your comment.  The only reason I suggested the existing observer role is because, if associated with the individual student, it kinda/sorta gives the access needed.  But there is no reason why these classroom "helpers" need access to the same comment system as used by the teacher when grading the assignment. It would be nice if the teacher could see the comments for additional input when viewing the assignment. An extra column or even call-out associated with an assignment that can be easily seen by both the student and teacher would solve the problem.  The comment addition to be under a course role permission (not tied to edit rights on grades!).

[nr2522]

Hi,  @kristin_bayless ‌ &  @debeeker ‌.

See if this helps: https://community.canvaslms.com/docs/DOC-12623-421495582 (This has to be done by an account admin.)

[kristin_bayless]

Hi  @nr2522  - sorry that I wasn't clear.  I am the Canvas admin for my institution, and have created several course level roles that are currently in use.  Did you realize that you cannot set up an observer role that provides access to see and comment on assignments without also giving access to change grades?  Very little incremental access with these role permissions.  Perhaps this is not quite the issue at the higher-ed level.  In K12, we have a number of classroom helpers that could assist teachers if we could provide access to see and comment on assignment submissions (without having to tie the user to each student individually).

[debeeker]

HI Christie,

We have one course where undergraduate instructors oversee a lot of the group/lab work. They are restricted in the type of grading they can do. It would be great if they could submit comments about student that the course professor could then review in order to assign grades to students. Seems like the logical place to do this is in the grade book though doesn't necessarily have to be. It would certainly be a useful feature.

[kristin_bayless]

 @debeeker ‌ - thanks for the reply.  I think I'll turn this into a feature request.  When I do, I'll come back and post the link here.