Hi there, @rardron ...
This is interesting. In a way, I suppose that you could somehow set up a Canvas course to mimic a Community rather than use it for a course. You could certainly create some custom roles such as "Leader" or "Member" and then set your permissions for those roles (this would be set up by your school's local Canvas administrator or someone from your school's Online Learning/eLearning department). Or, another idea would be to use the Groups feature which lives outside of a Canvas course. I wrote a blog posting about this four years ago... Campus Clubs and Groups - Instructure Community We have since move our clubs/groups on our campuses to full Canvas course shells since of how I've described in this blog because a full course shell has a few more features that the Groups option doesn't have.
I guess it would depend on what your goals were for your Community in a Canvas course shell or group. For example, do you want them to be able to post new discussion topics? Would there be any assignments/quizzes or grading done in your Community site? What other features would you want in your Community course space?
Hope this helps a bit...
