"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). 

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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.

[cesbrandt]

Adding the teacher's e-mail address is not likely to fix the issue for accessing it as a student if the external tool recognizes that the address is already associated with another account.

As for setting up a proxy, while that is a institution-level solution, it does nothing for expanding the functionality of the Student View feature, which is the key to this idea.

[ronmarx]

I didn't find this reference when I posted my same/similar idea, but want to memorialize it here with what I hope is a useful infographic.

As an UX/UI instructional designer, I like to view what I'm creating in the Canvas RCE after short intervals of work, and view what I've created within STUDENT VIEW.

We all know the sole circuitous manner to do this now, that requires publishing the incomplete assignment/quiz/discussion (1 click), leaving our work for the Settings page (1 click), selecting Student View (1 click), then rerouting back to the assignment/quiz/discussion (1+ clicks) to view as a student.

Extra screen real estate exists in the right margin to put the Student View (and the Share to Commons) feature on all assignment/quiz/discussion elements. Such a enhancement would save teachers and designers time, and make keep the the design task focused on the creative process rather than a mind-numbing, repetitive one.

[Renee_Carney]

The Radar idea stage has been removed from the Feature Idea Process.  You can read more about why in the blog post Adaptation: Feature Idea Process Changes.

This change will only impact the stage sort of this idea and will not change how it is voted on or how it is considered during prioritization activities.  This change will streamline the list of ideas 'open for voting', making it easier for you to see the true top voted ideas in one sort, here.

[glewd]

I'm coming to this discussion late, but would love a "real student view". Some things I can't see in the test student:

Attendance

Conversations

Collaborations

Differentiated assignments

External apps

Groups

Peer reviews

Profiles

And I imagine more …

I'd just like to be able to see Canvas exactly as my students see it. It's impossible to tell students what to do/where to go when you don't know what it looks like to them. ANY software company knows that the developer has to be able to see things from the end user's side. We are using Canvas to develop our courses for students. Please let us see what they do.

[PSU_Tony]

This idea seems like it would really solve the need for a secondary or "dummy" account in Canvas for instructors or instructional designers. We have many, many people with duplicate accounts and some of them are for this reason, but when trying to clean up the accounts that are not needed many of these become casualties. Either way it is a security risk. Would be nice to get an update.

[blangston]

Three years and another feature not added to Canvas.

[ryan_cloyd1]

  I fully agree that there needs to be a full and more realistic test student account (like a blank alias account) rather than just a test student view. I do instructional design work and at many times need to focus on user experience design that goes beyond the "test student"'s course limitations (for example; being able to demonstrate and manipulate third-party tool integrations like badging systems that require an actual account). I think the ability to have multiple test accounts would be crucial to better developing group assignments, discussion functions, and collaborative third-party tools.

  Unfortunately the university that I'm currently at has a strict rule against allowing "dummy" accounts (shared guest accounts) and I'm finding the current "student view" has a great deal of limitations in its ability to help in structuring course design. Maybe an Instructional Design / User Experience (UX) account could be implemented for specific administrative level access within Canvas. 

[Stef_retired]

Comments from Instructure

The Test Student in Canvas is supported in LTI launches with the Test User role. This behavior allows external app providers using LTI 1.3 and LTI Advantage services to implement the Test Student and provide a different view of their app when activated by an instructor via Student View in Canvas. When instructors view their courses as the Test Student, the test user role claim will be added as part of the LTI launch.

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

[maguire]

I have found that a useful way to explore such functionality is by setting up a Canvas instanced (built from source code) and actually creating fake users in it. In this way, the fake users can have whatever property I need them to have to be able to test code.

For example, I have created fake users that have information stored as custom user data (to store the information about the name of the student's program of study and their track/specialization).  Using this I was able to demonstrate the value of adding this information to Canvas - as currently, this information is in a completely separate student information system that I could only access via a web browser and lots of pointing and clicking. I was able to show that if this information were available, an LTI application could do an adaptive survey or quiz that could take into consideration the student's program of study and track to adapt the questions to suit the student's program and track.

In some other testing, I have found that I really need to have a lot of other information to fully emulate a real student - such as sis_integration_id for the student and course. In the case of interacting with a SIS that only has real users in it, this breaks the fully fake user model as there has to be some actual real data included in the fake user's configuration.

[cesbrandt]

I'm not really sure that fits with the original concept of the idea, but I also can't fault the logic of bringing it into standards of the version.

I guess we'll have to wait and see how this plays out with the many vendors we contract with, but I'm grateful to see this hasn't been forgotten! :smileygrin: