[Enrollments] Add a Substitute Portal Feature

[michael_william]

This idea has been developed and deployed to Canvas LMS

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It would be great if Canvas had a substitute portal similar to what PowerSchool provides for substitutes (link).

The portal would allow a substitute to access the sub portal, choose the school they are working at that day, choose the teacher they are subbing for, and enter a dynamically changing password. Once this authentication occurs, the sub should have read-only access to the courses available to the teacher with options to take attendance, grade work, facilitate discussions, etc.

This functionality would really support the teacher shortage that is occurring nationwide and help students with a seamless transition when a sub is necessary.

[MattHanes]

I like this idea! Maybe they could do something like adding the sub as an observer of the Test Student temporarily.

[MattHanes]

I think the tricky part is whether the subs would have accounts to add. We make Canvas accounts for our subs, but I'm wondering if all school districts would do that. Maybe another option would be a highly restricted admin account. Then the teacher can just leave the login information for the account and links to the specific courses so the sub doesn't have to search for them. Ideally, they could include that info in the sub-folder for even unplanned absences.

[michael_william]

I envision the solution automatically creating a substitute account for each teacher on the backend, similar to how each course has a test student that is available in each section. This account is only accessed to substitutes from the frontend substitute portal by selecting the school and the teacher and authenticating using the dynamic password. Teachers could use the view as a substitute to see what access is available to the sub as well.

We currently manually need to add our daily and long-term subs to our SIS, wait for it to sync to Canvas and then manually add them to each course that the teacher is responsible for. This is time and resource-consuming and results in several unnecessary and/or unused accounts all over the place with teacher access.

This setup ensures access and content are secured and that only necessary accounts are being added.

[emily_beckman]

I think a number of schools can benefit from this. Being a small or big school I see this as being a huge benefit. I like the "observer teacher" user like described above with view only access to courses. Then teachers don't have to give access to X number of items for the day and for possibly multipul courses.

From the school side it would be nice to not have to go into Canvas and grant access for the classes each needs.  I like the random code that is generated to get the sub connected to the course(s) they need. We are a small school and at times teachers cover so that means one teacher that's out might have 3 subs for their classes on any given day. That's a lot of back end work if we have to connect each user to the course they are subbing. 

Example: Today 5 teaches are out so 15 classes needed covering. We had 12 people covering those 15 classes, from a school standpoint that can take time that we don't have to get users into courses and then removed if we have to do it by hand and to do this on a daily basis it's not ideal. 

This is a prime example of why a portal is needed. It needs to be as simple as possible for the school and user. They only need view only access like the student view gives. Their access needs to be available only for one day. I would enjoy working with Canvas on this feature. 

[tgr]

these are great ideas, especially the "observer teacher" for the day. Would make life much easier for subs especially, since they wouldn't have to deal with multiple emails, texts, and or paper notes left on the desk.

As a sub I've had to do all that as well as log into multiple sites and juggle it all to get  access to whatever plans the teacher wants me to have. It creates so many more problems and more work for us.

Would be so much easier if we were just given our own sub access to canvas for the day and everything we need was right there for us! 

[KristinL]

  Comments from Instructure

This feature is available in Beta. For more information, please read through the 

Canvas Release Notes (2023-12-16) 

How do I access the Canvas beta environment as an instructor?

[KristinL]

Comments from Instructure

For more information, please read through the Canvas Release Notes (2023-12-16)