[ARCHIVED] Where Do Students Join Classes?

[ravmitterhoff]

This is such a basic question and I cannot seem to find answers. It appears that students only see there courses listed after they have joined them. Therefore my questions are:

1. Where can they browse and join courses?

2. Is there a calendar where they can see courses they have not yet joined?

3. Is there a course list even for non-canvas users who may want to join?

[rake_9]

As a rule, this kind of functionality is not part of Canvas. Most of us in higher ed have another system for that; generally a Registrar's course catalog and schedule or something like that.  We would then use an integration of some kind to at least partially automate course creation and enrollment based on activity in the other system. 

At my University, we have a lot of interest in what we are calling "public-facing courses" that would be offered to people who aren't seeking actual college credit but do need CEUs, professional development hours, or just knowledge. At this point, the units involved in this work publicize their offering on existing websites, emails, etc. They handle registration in a lot of different ways and then use the upload options in the admin side of Canvas to create accounts and enroll people in courses. This all happens in a separate instance of Canvas, since it is so different from how we manage academic courses, but I think you could use both methods in the same instance if you wanted to. 

In a response to a different post of yours, I think I mentioned another Instructure product called Catalog that would provide a public listing of available courses and facilitate account creation and enrollment. We are going to take a good look at that later in January for those public facing courses. 

[ravmitterhoff]

Thanks for your full reply. But I am still thinking that there must be a list of courses or syllabus with course listing somewhere inside of canvas that I could refer my students to. If not, like you say, I can just create it myself with a form check list that offers the courses and then add the students to the courses. But it seems silly that I would need to manually create a calendar with list of the courses with days and times. There must be a better way. 

[dlyons]

Canvas does have the ability to show a "Public Course Index", and instructors can opt to include their courses in that index, which is browsable by users looking for courses to join. Because the vast majority of institutions have, as  @rake_9 ‌ mentioned, an entire system and workflow to manage enrollments, this functionality is off by default and can only be enabled by administrators for security and privacy reasons.

If you're interested in including courses at your institution in your institution's Public Course Index you'll need to talk to your local Canvas administrator about enabling it, how the institution will handle user accounts, etc. These guides, How do I include a course in the Public Course Index?, How do I view my institution's Public Course Index as an instructor?, How do I customize visibility options for a course? ,and the guides they link to should be enough to get you started.

(Note that the list of public courses, content of courses, and ability to enroll in a course are separate things so your institution can customize to their needs; it's not an all or nothing situation.)

If this sounds like what you're after but you're not sure how to make the necessary changes, I highly recommend you and your institution's Canvas admin contact your CSM (Customer Success Manager) for how to best proceed.

[ravmitterhoff]

I figured it out. See https://community.canvaslms.com/message/91671-how-to-create-a-course-index-where-students-can-join-c... 

[Robbie_Grant]

ravmitterhoff,

We are giving the Canvas Admins area a little bit of love and just want to check in with you.  This will also bring this question new attention. 

Were you able to find an answer to your question? I am going to go ahead and mark this question as answered because there hasn't been any more activity in a while so I assume that you have the information that you need. If you still have a question about this or if you have information that you would like to share with the community, by all means, please do come back and leave a comment.  Also, if this question has been answered by one of the previous replies, please feel free to mark that answer as correct.

Robbie