Parental observation in canvas complicated with three children!

[trberta]

  This idea has been developed and deployed to Canvas

  Idea will be open for vote Wed. September 2, 2015 - Wed. December 2, 2015  Learn more about voting...

We have three children at the same high school.  We have registered as Canvas observers, and added all three children to our watch list. With 8 class periods, that's 24 potential classes to watch, and they appear to be listed ALPHABETICALLY, without an obvious way to filter by student, or clearly identify which student is taking which class.

Our three children have very different learning styles and levels of achievement, which demand three very different levels of observation.  Our temporary workaround will be very "clunky" (an old technical term meaning not user-friendly).  We are going to have to set up three separate parental accounts, using three separate parent email addresses, and observe one student in each account.

I am excited about using your system and at first blush it seems to have a number of advantages over MyBigCampus that we used last year.  However, if we can't look at one student at a time, or somehow sort things differently, it could be a frustrating year.  Can you help us?

  Comments from Instructure

May 2016 Update:

Please find more info at Canvas Studio: Canvas Parent

[bbrennan]

Why am I finding event he voting situation to be way too cumbersome. The directions above still aren't allowing me to vote.

[KristinL]

Once a feature is "In Development", the ability to vote is removed. Be sure to bookmark and follow the page for updates!

[joseph_allen]

Brian,

I realize this post is a couple of months old, but I am just seeing it now.  One big item that i don't see people talking about is the permission linkage between Announcements and Discussions.  We have trained all of our teachers (8k of them) to use Announcements as a way to communicate with the parent community who of course are observers.  However the 'discussion' permission is disabled for observers because under FERPA, parents should not be seeing other students.  So we were very disappointed to learn recently that all these announcements teachers have been sending out are not getting to the parents because these two permissions are linked.  Please separate the permissions for announcements and discussions for observers.  This is critical for K12 and for parents to truly be able to monitor what is going on in their child's classroom.

[bradspencer]

This is a big deal. Glad it is being developed.

[eric_hudson]

Deactivated user​ suggested I post this idea here: "I would like to see the option to provide observers access to student analytics/access reports. It is frustrating to my observers that they cannot quickly review their linked students' most recent activity -- grades and work only tell part of the story. Ideally, this is a feature I could turn on/off in the Permissions field in the Admin Settings."

I think any update to Observer permissions should include this option. Canvas analytics are a critical tool for teachers; why shouldn't they be for parents and other invested parties?

[dhenry]

Very happy to see this idea in development.  We use this feature as a means for coaches to keep up with team members.  A single coach may have 15-20 students to observe and the ability to filter by student would be a tremendous help to them. 

[Renee_Carney]

  This idea has been developed and deployed to Canvas

Please find more info at Canvas Studio: Canvas Parent

[bradspencer]

Having a completely different Parent app wasn't the solution we were hoping for and still leaves us wanting a better in-browser solution for Observer accounts. I think there's still much work left to do on this issue.

[mikescheid]

I couldn't agree more. The app is great and we are using it. However, it is not a solution to this problem.

[joseph_allen]

The app and the browser certainly complement each other, but they are still apples and oranges.