Limit student users to only see fellow section users by API

[ninafox]

  This idea has been developed and deployed to Canvas

  Idea will be open for vote Wed. August 5, 2015 - Wed. November 4, 2015  Learn more about voting...

We would like to request the addition of the ability to modify the student privileges in a course to toggle the ability of a student to only see their fellow section users via an API call.  It would also be nice to be able to do this by section directly form the UI interface.

  Comments from Instructure

For more information, please read through the Canvas Production Release Notes (2015-12-19)

[allison]

ninafox​ et al, you've hit on a big issue which I know  @peytoncraighill  has been thinking about in recent months: how to make Canvas more "section aware". As you've noted, creating thin walls between sections for any of the interactive pieces in Canvas would make it possible for instructors to keep one set of content and still interact with all of their students in one course shell. This is would be what I would call a massive infrastructural project with implications for the entire app, but something I'd still like to break down and explore, since I know sections are an critical vehicle for managing enrollments.

It would be great if we could begin by separating this request into discrete pieces with discrete benefits, for example:

Section Aware People Page : As a student, I can't see the students that belong to other sections, so that...

Section Aware Discussions : As a student, I can't see the replies for students that belong to other sections, so that...

Section Aware Inbox : As a student, ...

Section Aware Peer Review : As a student, ...

Section Aware Groups : As a student, ...

Others?

At this point, I don't see a need for making separate ideas out of this, but let's dig in and figure out together where the greatest benefits are to be found. Thanks again for your comments and ideas.

Allison

[anthonem]

Hi Deactivated user​ thanks for your post! YES to all the scenarios you've posted. You could also add:

1) Section aware Conferences

2) Section aware Chat

3) Section aware Collaborations

4) Section aware Announcement replies (maybe? this one could get complicated)

An addition to Discussions -- students should not be able to see topics created by classmates in another section

We have been looking at this functionality primarily for FERPA concerns, but there's many pedagogical needs that would benefit from increased section aware functionality. Many of our merged courses contain sections where students don't meet physically in the same place at the same time. Because of this, student enrollment information for the two sections is considered FERPA-protected. We have a labyrinthine help guide showing faculty how to design their course to comply with FERPA, but you almost need a Master's degree to understand it!

[Renee_Carney]

  This idea has been developed and is On Canvas Beta How do I access the Canvas beta environment?

For more information, please read through the Canvas Beta Release Notes (2015-11-30)

[curtain]

Awesome!  We usually don't see the API release notes until the production release but can you let us know what the API parameter for this is?  We would like to begin adding it to our code to ensure we are ready for Spring 2016 enrollments.  Most of ours are already in Canvas so we may need to remove and re-add them all with this API parameter and I want to test and plan for that.

[jeremy2]

set enrollment[limit_privileges_to_course_section]=1 in the "Enroll a user" API endpoint documented here:

Enrollments - Canvas LMS REST API Documentation

This is the same way section-limited Teacher and TA enrollments were created in the API previously; we just made it work with other enrollment types as well.

[ninafox]

FYI to all, this is a great development no doubt but I believe that it will not cover discussions.  So once you run the API call, one would still need to go and hide discussions as it will not be section aware.

[Renee_Carney]

  This idea has been developed and deployed to Canvas

For more information, please read through the Canvas Production Release Notes (2015-12-12)

[curtain]

We have started integrating this into our code.  Thank you very much for this detail!

[Renee_Carney]

Thank you to ninafox for submitting this idea, as well as,  @anthonem , cms_hickss,  @arovner ,  @helenc ,  @RobDitto ,  @curtain , and  @straussi  for your contributions. Your investment in this idea helped refine a feature which is now part of the Canvas!

[hesspe]

I realize this is not an active thread, but it's the only place I found where I can sound off.  It  would be  nice if this could be set at the section level rather than at the user level.  Once students are enrolled in a section, as far as I can tell, you have to limit them one by one.  There's no way to have it take effect for a whole section with one setting, even using the API.  At present I'm working with 6 large core courses, each with 3 or 4 sections  (1400 already-enrolled students), that would like to restrict views to section participants, and I'm just not going to be able to do that for them.  If I'm missing an easy fix, please let me know.