Adding a potential instructor to a past course to view

[CindyCFFP]

Canvas will not let me add a potential instructor (or any People) to a closed session course. If I extend the course end date, it lets me add, but will this course then show up on all the dashboards of students in that class? If so, how else can I show a potential instructor that course?

[chriscas · Accepted solution]

Hi @CindyCFFP,

There are two ways I know of to tackle this...

1. As you've already basically mentioned, you can extend the course dates, add the person, have them accept the invite, then set the course dates back to the original.  If you can coordinate the timing with the person being added, this only takes a couple minutes, and students probably wouldn't notice the course being back on their dashboard for that short time.
2. If you're an admin, or know your Canvas admin, they could add the extra person via an SIS import csv file, which wouldn't require the course dates to be changed, nor would the other person have to accept the invite.

Hope this helps a bit. Let us know if you have any other questions or need clarification around this.

-Chris

[chriscas · Accepted solution]

Hi @CindyCFFP,

There are two ways I know of to tackle this...

1. As you've already basically mentioned, you can extend the course dates, add the person, have them accept the invite, then set the course dates back to the original.  If you can coordinate the timing with the person being added, this only takes a couple minutes, and students probably wouldn't notice the course being back on their dashboard for that short time.
2. If you're an admin, or know your Canvas admin, they could add the extra person via an SIS import csv file, which wouldn't require the course dates to be changed, nor would the other person have to accept the invite.

Hope this helps a bit. Let us know if you have any other questions or need clarification around this.

-Chris

[JessicaDeanSVC · Accepted solution]

In addition to Chris' suggestions, here's what we do at my institution:

1. Extend the course end date (generally for a month or so)
2. In the course settings, go to sections and create a new section; we call ours "Extended Access"
3. Click on the name of the section(s) that had students enrolled, then select edit section on the new page; change the section end date to yesterday
4. Then you can go to the people tab and add all the folks you need, putting them in the new section

This can feel a bit laborious, but since we often end up adding more folks to the course to reference it later on, it saves time in the long run.