"Real" Student View

[cesbrandt]

This idea has been developed and deployed to Canvas

For details, please read through the Canvas Deploy Notes (2020-08-12). 

---

Okay, so the title could use some work, sorry about that.

Alright, so the basic idea is that the Student View be expanded to emulate a legitimate account with no special permissions. Now, within Canvas, the current option is fairly accommodating, but it is troublesome when dealing with external tools that are reliant upon additional information that is not generated for the current Student View system.

For example, Chalk & Wire Learning Assessment uses the e-mail address of the user to create or access the account-level intended for that user. This is troublesome for testing due to the need to masquerade or login as a student account, separate our actual accounts. Of course, for administrators, this isn't a horrible setback, but for teachers demonstrating how-to use the external tool to their class don't have the luxury of accessing other user accounts. As a result, they must "borrow" a student account to perform their demonstrations.

As external tools come in all shapes and sizes, I am pushing forward the idea of expanding the Student View to emulate a full user to avoid encountering similar issues that may occur with other external tools that require different information that isn't created in the Student View.

[hasti]

 @kona , I am unable to figure out how to access either environment. If I go to https://canvas.test.instructure.com/login/canvas I don't have an email/password combination to give it that is valid; if I go to https://canvas.wisc.edu.test.instructure.com I get an message that the site is not set up correctly.

In any case, it does not appear that I would be able to get any better of a student view than currently offered (and I could not add my TAs as students either). I need to have an actual real student view so I can see what happens when students have multiple quiz submissions, be able to know exactly what students see in graded quizzes and the grades (which is not completely accurately depicted by either the Student View or the Canvas documentation), among other things.

[hasti]

Got the answer - my university "doesn't have" the test/beta environments.

[kona]

Strange... maybe they don't have them for faculty use because it comes with a normal Canvas installation - so it's not like it's extra - and as an admin I use it all the time and find it extremely helpful. 

Sorry! 😞

[kschneider25]

 @hasti ‌ try https://wisc.test.instructure.com and https://wisc.beta.instructure.com. 

[scottdennis]

 @hasti ‌,

Kori has them in the right order (I can never remember).  Were you ever able to access your test and beta environments?

[maguire]

In trying to help another teacher out with making submissions via the test user ("Studenttest") to URKUND via the beta environment the teacher gets an error message that the test users does not have an e-mail address. However, I find that I cannot assign the test user an e-mail address (in this case the e-mail address of the teacher). Is there a reason that the test user cannot be assigned an e-mail address?

The reason to use the beta environment is that the submissions will get deleted when the beta environment is refreshed, rather than being kept permanently in the production environment).

[kschneider25]

 @maguire ‌ test student is not a real user Canvas profile so there isn't an email address or SIS ID or anything unique.  If you are using beta then you can masquerade as anyone within your environment to submit the assignment. You could masquerade as each student within the course, for example.

Also depending on how URKUND was implemented in your environment, the Canvas beta might be connecting to URKUND production environment unless your school is changing the connection every week within Canvas beta and/or test to point to URKUND test environments.

[tiffany_maglasa]

I agree;  I wish I could see how Canvas looks to a particular student to see if they can see my feedback on assignments, correct answers for quizzes, or what things they get notifications about (see their specific 'course steam').

[cesbrandt]

That's already possible through masquerading, or as it's now called "act as user". This, however, is an administrative ability that should not be granted to anyone lightly.

This idea isn't so that faculty can see from a specific student's point-of-view, but to emulate being a student more thoroughly. It's primarily intended to make external tools, many of which require an e-mail address be included in the user data supplied, easier to test by allowing them to pull information from the Student View account, rather than needing a properly made secondary account.

[maguire]

Would being able to add the teacher's email address as the e-mail address use with the LTI call for the test student be sufficient? 

Alternatively, perhaps the solution is to introduce an LTI proxy that can add this information; then call the really external LTI provider.

Chip