Allow Instructors to Enroll Other Instructors in Master Courses

Chris_Hofer
Community Coach
Community Coach

tl;dr    We are looking for a way to give our instructors the ability to enroll other instructors into "master" courses on their own instead of going through us...as Canvas Administrators.  But first, it would be good to have some background info...

We have a term called "Master Term" where we house a "master" version of all our courses (currently 1,100+ courses).  In this term, we enroll full-time and adjunct faculty with one of the following roles:

  • Teacher
  • Viewer -- This is a custom role we created long ago that is based on the "Teacher" role type.  We've turned many of the permissions off for this role.  Essentially, this role allows someone to view the contents of a "master" course in our "Master Term" without any editing rights.  The "Viewer" can still import content from his her own semester course from the "master" course.

Typically, we have one (maybe two) person as the "Teacher" in a given "master" course.  This person is responsible for keeping the course curriculum up-to-date.  All other folks who would be teaching sections of that course in a given semester get the "Viewer" role in the "master" course so they can import content.

Our sub-account structure looks like this...where we have three Deans who each have access to their own main sub-account (those highlighted in blue).  Our three Deans have Associate Deans who each have access to their own sub-sub-account (those highlighted in green).  So, for example, AD #1 can only see her courses; AD #2 can only see his courses, AD #3 can only see his courses, but Dean #1 can see all courses from all three of those areas.

  • Applied Trades & Technologies (Dean #1)
    • Business & IT (Associate Dean #1)
    • Manufacturing (Associate Dean #2)
    • Trades (Associate Dean #3)
  • General Studies (Dean #2)
    • Adult Basic Education (Associate Dean #4)
    • General Education (Associate Dean #5)
  • Health & Human Services (Dean #3)
    • Health (Associate Dean #6)
    • Human Services (Associate Dean #7)
    • Nursing (Associate Dean #8)

For each "Master Term" course, we specify the proper sub-account (the ones listed in green) that they belong to...so that our Deans and ADs can see those when they log in to Canvas.

It has been our practice to not allow any full-time or adjunct faculty member to be able to enroll other people in courses ("master" courses or actual semester courses with students in them) as this is handled by via SIS imports and us as Canvas admins.  We are looking for a way in which someone with the "Teacher" role in a "master" course would be able to manually add/remove a fellow full-time/adjunct faculty member in a "master" course with the "Teacher" or "Viewer" role without having to ask us to do it for them.  Also, it would help if this person in each "master" course would be able to edit the role of an individual in a "master" course (from "Viewer" to "Teacher", for example).  However, we do not want our instructors to be able to enroll in actual non-"master" courses with students in them.  We would only want this for our "Master Term" courses.

Has anyone implemented anything like this at their school?  Or, do you have any thoughts as to how this might be accomplished?  Looking for ideas...thanks.