Extend Course for One Student

[msanders]

One of our students needs access to a course beyond the Term end date. I found the comments on the feature request https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/1152-extend-course-for-individual-student very helpful. Since the comments were made a while ago, I just want to verify that the following steps are still valid. Any comments, suggestions, corrections would be appreciated!

1. Manually create a new section in the course. Edit the section to set the start/end dates as well as check the box to restrict student access.

2. Go to the People page and add the students, parents, and teacher to the new section. It is not a requirement to remove them from the original section.

3. Go to Admin > Account > Grading.  Find and edit the applicable grading period. Change the "Close Date" to coincide with the new section "End Date". 

4. Notify the teacher that section specific assignments may need to be updated as well as assignment due dates.

Am I missing anything?

Thanks!

[msanders]

Reaching out to a few folks who commented on the "Extend Course for Individual Student" feature request to see if they have any input. Thanks!

 @kona ‌ SHEBENE‌ snugent‌

[snugent]

Hi  @msanders ‌

I work at community college so we don't use grading periods and I don't have experience with grading periods so I am not sure if that will change anything in your process but here is what I do. 

Once I get the request I do the following:

• I create a new term with dates to place the course in while it is active
• Then I go to the course and create a new section. I set dates on the section since we use section dates for starting and ending courses. 
• On the course details tab I change the term to manually created term. (Note: we restrict student activity after end date so the other students won't have access from the other section.)
• Then I go to the people page and add the student and instructor to the newly created section.
• I let the instructor know there is a new section and they can assign assignments directly to the student using the differentiated assignment options.  
• That is pretty much it. The course will end and the term will close and cut off student access. I do go back and place the course in its correct term after student is done. 

[kona]

This is similar to what we do. 🙂

[msanders]

Thank you!  I'm curious, why do you need to create a new term?  Won't the new section start/end dates override the original term dates?

[snugent]

In theory yes but in reality I have found that once a term closes it can cause issues in a course with an open section. You could also move the course to the next term if you don't want to create a new term. 

[SHEBENE]

I don't make a new term (I'm allergic to extra terms), I use the extra section option referenced above. We don't use grading periods but that does seem to be in line with the needed changes. Once set I would masquerade as the student to make sure they can get to the things they need to get to and then it's good to go. If you do this after the course has concluded you'll first need to set course dates that "unconclude" the course and then set up the section.

[msanders]

Thank you all for your feedback! I kept the same term, but used the section dates to override the end. It seems to be working!!