Last Activity for Removed Students

[ProfessorBeyrer]

In my district our SIS enrollment processing for drops removes students' users from Canvas courses. I don't know the specific status that is applied, but I do know that dropped students do not appear on the Prior Users page. One of the challenges this presents is for documenting when students on financial aid have been removed from a class. Their aid can be prorated based on the last date they participated in an academically related activity, so it is necessary for a fully online class that their Last Activity be visible.

In the embedded video I show how an instructor can find this date to share with our Financial Aid office by using our .test Canvas instance. I suggest using .test because that way the student can be manually re-enrolled in the class without generating a notification.

[ken_cooper]

Good post  @ProfessorBeyrer , that video is helpful.  I would add depending on how recently the student dropped it may be beneficial to use .beta rather than .test, depending upon when the last refresh was (which can be seen on this helpful page).

For Los Rios specifically, we did have our four colleges decide to delete rather than conclude or make inactive those that dropped courses, as the concern at the time (in 2016, when we were adopting Canvas) was that faculty would not want to see those folks on their course lists, course statistics, access reports, etc  We have a good deal of churn in our courses at the beginning of the semester, and there would be some bloat in our users within courses without making that decision.

 @James ‌ linked this helpful doc, Canvas Enrollment Status Comparison on this tread from back around the time we were deciding on that Grades for deleted students. I think it's helpful to see what the comparison is between the different statuses that can be applied to a college's SIS loads, as what works for one institution may not be the best option for every institution.

Ken

[James]

We delete for the first ten days (until census date) and then we conclude after that. I wrote a script for our business office that determines date of last activity/attendance by looking at submissions. It's not perfect, but they don't have to contact the instructor for the LDOA (our SIS doesn't require faculty to enter that when we request a drop) any more and it makes them happy. It works with concluded students, but it doesn't work with deleted enrollments -- we have to go into test or beta to restore them.

I would also recommend Beta over Test. Beta is (at least for now), updated weekly while Test is only updated when Production is updated, so it may be (for now) up to 3 weeks behind. I'm not sure how frequently those will be updated once Canvas switches to the new schedule. I hope beta is updated frequently, I rely on it for things like this and for playing What If grades for the students since changing those in production actually changes their grade.

[ProfessorBeyrer]

 @ken_cooper  Thank You for linking that enrollment status document. I thought about tracking it down before posting my blog (or editing it later) but now I don't have to!

[ProfessorBeyrer]

 @James  Thank You for sharing that info about the .beta instance. One reason I used .test is I'm not sure I'm ready to answer all the questions I might get when my other faculty see all the goodies that are on the .beta instance.