Allow added Course Designers Ability to Change People's Roles

[chris-thompson]

A coworker of mine created a course and added me as a Designer.  We have also added other users to the course as Teachers, but would like to change some of their roles to also be Designers.  I do not see the option to change the role of any people in the course.  Is there something I am missing?  Can a person who has been added to a course as a Designer do this?  Or does the original author of the course have to change a setting to allow me to do this?

[Chris_Hofer]

Hello there, @chris-thompson ...

To confirm, you are unable to change the roles of users on your "People" page using this Guide, correct?  How do I edit user roles in a course? - Instructure Community

If this option is not available to you as a "Designer" in the course, it may be because of permissions that your school's local Canvas administrator has configured on the administrative side of Canvas.  These permissions are set by your Canvas administrator using this Guide: How do I set permissions for a course-level role i... - Instructure Community.  There is a PDF file linked in the blue box at the top of that Guide which describes the default settings, and so the "Designer" role may not allow you to change the role of someone...by default.  This would be a conversation that you'd need to have with your school's Canvas admin...but keep in mind that making this kind of change for you would affect all people who have a "Designer" role in a Canvas course.

I hope this will help a bit.  Let Community members know if you have any other questions about this...thanks!

[chris-thompson]

Hi there and thank you for your response.  You are correct in that I do not see the 3 dots at the right hand side of each user under the "People" tab for the course.  As for the local administrator changing permissions for certain roles, my account is a Free for Teachers account, so I am uncertain if I even have an organization administrator.  Where would I go to check this?  Or is it based on the admin permissions for the organization of whoever made the course initially?

[Stef_retired · Accepted solution]

@chris-thompson Customizing of permissions attached to roles is not available to Free For Teachers users.

[chris-thompson]

Hi Stefanie:

Thank you for this information.  So would it be correct to assume that since permissions cannot be customized for Free for Teachers users, that the only person who would be able to switch the roles of someone in the course would be the original author?

[Stef_retired]

That's correct, @chris-thompson . In Free For Teachers, the teacher owns the course and its enrollments. They can change a user's role in a course, but cannot customize permissions for roles.