Adding anonymous students to a class

[smartps]

Hi all,

I have a class with a teacher (enrolled using their email address) who logs in using their email address and password (no single sign-on configured).

I would like 10 students to have access to the class without me ever knowing any of their Personally Identifiable Information (PII). This means email addresses can't be used.

Is there a way to add students with a username and password that can be manually given to the students without the need for email?

Thanks

[chadscott · Accepted solution]

Howdy,

There must be an email associated with the account. One option would be if you don't care about notifications, etc. - you could use a throwaway gmail account.

Make a Google account like zzzstudentaccountrand@gmail.com then you can put . (periods) throughout to make Canvas think they are unique addresses. If you have to verify the account, you could then go into the mailbox to verify, but then don't check it again once the students start using the logins.

zzzstudentaccountrand@gmail.com would be student 1

z.zzstudentaccountrand@gmail.com would be student 2

zz.zstudentaccountrand@gmailc.om would be student 3, etc.

Cheers,

Chad

[chadscott · Accepted solution]

Howdy,

There must be an email associated with the account. One option would be if you don't care about notifications, etc. - you could use a throwaway gmail account.

Make a Google account like zzzstudentaccountrand@gmail.com then you can put . (periods) throughout to make Canvas think they are unique addresses. If you have to verify the account, you could then go into the mailbox to verify, but then don't check it again once the students start using the logins.

zzzstudentaccountrand@gmail.com would be student 1

z.zzstudentaccountrand@gmail.com would be student 2

zz.zstudentaccountrand@gmailc.om would be student 3, etc.

Cheers,

Chad

[nwilson7 · Accepted solution]

@smartps I had never tried the "." period trick that @chadscott  mentioned (nice trick by the way) but I have used the + trick which works about the same.  You create 1 gmail account and then can append +1, +2, +3 (really + anything) to it.  So you could create one that is smartps@gmail.com and then your students would be smartps+1@gmail.com and so on.  The nice thing in either trick is that they still go back to the original email address so if you need to verify something, like will be required for Canvas, those verification emails go to the initial smartps@gmail.com account.

-Nick