Admins Adding Themselves to Courses

[caroline_foley]

If you are a Canvas admin for your whole account, you can view any course in that account. However, I was curious if anyone ever adds themselves as a teacher or course designer to certain courses.

If so, have you found any benefit, particularly regarding your own procedures and processes, to doing this? Perhaps making it easier for you to access the course or track quality assurance.

I'm not sure if anyone has tried this or if there are any benefits, but I would love to hear if anyone has tried this and found that it's made their life as an Admin easier!

[rake_9]

Many of our sub-account admins will do this; these folks are mostly instructional technologists / course coordinators / instructional designers.  FWIW, we use different accounts for "mere mortal" activities and sub-account-level activities.  Reasons I've heard for doing this; some of these are, IMO, more valid than others

• setting up LTI tools that require course enrollment to function on behalf of faculty
• confirming that the instructor view is not significantly different than the admin view; or the that the generic student view is accurate
• being able to get course notifications / being a "known person" in the course, in case there are technology questions they can address for students
• it is just easier than using their separate log in
• the instructor with whom they are working added them, and it is just easier than using their separate log in

[caroline_foley]

Thanks for sharing,  @rake9ad ! These are definitely useful things to keep in mind for sub-accounts, etc...

[bdalton_sales]

LTI should work in most cases but occasionally the tool relies on a teacher role specifically and won't recognise the admin role as a teacher so that's a really good point.

[Bobby2]

Good question  @caroline_foley .

If you are doing this just be aware that it can really slow Canvas down eg. the calendar will take FOREVER to load. 

Instead just bookmark courses perhaps. Ask people to share urls of courses for easier access too. 

[caroline_foley]

Thanks for your response,  @Bobby2 ! Good to know that it makes Canvas, especially the calendar, slow.

I haven't personally been adding myself as an Instructor/Course Designer to many courses; I pretty much only use the Admin section right now.

[jo_keith1]

Caroline,

We found there was no benefit to add ourselves as a teacher or other role to a course when we are Admins. We either remove admin perms and add each other to the course; then re-add as admin when finished testing. Most of us have created guest accounts in our identity system that banner passes to canvas. We can then enroll that guest acct in courses and not get overridden by our admin perms.

[caroline_foley]

Thanks for that insight,  @jo_keith !

[kona]

As an Admin I only add myself to the courses that I'm either (1) actually teaching, (2) actively building, or (3) actively overseeing or need to access frequently. For #2 & #3 - I add myself purely for convenience, but am quick to remove myself as soon as I don't need to be in the course as frequently. Otherwise I just float in and out of courses as needed. 🙂

Kona

[caroline_foley]

That's what I do too,  @kona ! Thank you!

[ejackson]

As an Admin, I add myself as Course Designer when helping our faculty with adding quizzes and question banks to their courses, using Respondus. I have to be in the course in order for Respondus to access it. Once I'm finished though, I take myself right out of the course so I don't get all the course notifications. I wish there was an easier way, so I didn't have to add/delete myself out of the courses, but as long as it works, I can handle the extra steps.

[caroline_foley]

Thanks,  @ejackson !

I'm assuming Respondus is an LTI tool? If so, it sounds like you are not the only one that has found adding yourself to a course useful for an integration!

[bickley_tl]

I to use Respondus in the same manner. When not using Respondus I try not to be enrolled in courses. 

[jsavage2]

Turnitin and Kaltura are also notorious for this, as was the Library eReserves tool at my previous institution. 

I would add that I don't always enroll myself as a student, either. Sometimes I need to be in the course as a Student. The interesting thing about testing LTI integrations this way is that they *just* look at the course enrollment, so I can be enrolled as Student or Teacher, but still have administrator privileges to make changes. Very useful.

[caroline_foley]

I'm thinking that the new Content Link Error notification in this week's release notes might be a reason for an admin/instructional designer to add themselves to a course. If I have the bandwidth soon, I'm planning on experimenting with this myself, but, if anyone else tries it in the meantime, I'd love to hear it!

[audra_agnelly]

I add myself to my personal sandbox courses, to test courses I've created when we're looking at an new LTI. Personally, it's easier for me to organize that way and have that course on my dashboard rather than remembering what I named the course or clicking down a few levels to the Test Course subaccount.  

Our district also has professional communities setup in Canvas to share curriculum and other resources/news with teachers. With 70+ schools in our district, they're essential resources to get information out to staff. Some of these communities use the announcement feature regularly, so where it's pertinent, I've enrolled myself in those communities/courses so that I can receive their announcements.

[caroline_foley]

Thanks for sharing,  @audra_agnelly  ! I also add myself to my playground courses because it's nice to have easy access to them via Dashboard.

That's a good point re: announcements. I'm not sure I currently have any courses that I want to receive announcements from, but I could see this coming up in the future. Definitely something to keep in mind!

[jcoehoorn]

I do this, but only for certain courses, because it then adds those courses to my dashboard. I don't want to see everything in my dashboard, but when I'm helping an instructor with a specific course it's useful to have that shortcut available within canvas. It's also useful, as admin, to have *something* show up in the dashboard other than an empty page.

[caroline_foley]

Thanks,  @jcoehoorn ! Sounds like we add ourselves similarly to courses.

[tlampley]

Greetings  @caroline_foley  it's nice to meet you!

I think it depends on the reason or use case you have for doing so.  For the most part, if you are looking to troubleshoot or duplicate an issue, masquerading/impersonating the instructor, or student(s) within the course provides me with the majority of what I need to diagnose the matter. 

Also, implementing the CANVATASTIC Student View (a.k.a. Test Student Account) allows me to view the course from their perspective.  Other than that, unless I'm looking to test a newly created Role, my Admin Account completes what may be lacking in the others.

So it depends on the use-case you have.  Would you mind sharing a bit more, the problem or issue you are experiencing--that you think adding yourself to within a given role--would solve please?

Thank you, and I look forward to your reply.

Have a SUPER Evening!

[caroline_foley]

Hi  @tlampley ! Nice to "meet" you too.

I don't have a specific problem or issue that I am experiencing. I really just wanted to hear more from others about how they use it. As you can see in this thread, people have lots of different processes and reasons!  I use all the tools you suggest (act as user, student view, etc...), but I am always curious about how I could be using a tool like Canvas more effectively. So that's why I started this thread to hear from other folks!

I hope this illuminates what I am trying to accomplish! Thanks for contributing