Can I add a "visiting" student to Canvas for him/her to participate in Classroom Discussion Board Assignments?

[jay_lewenstein]

Hola Canvas,

First of all, thank you for your tremendous support. 

Today, I have a weird question.

Can I provide a "visiting" student or guest access to our Canvas Discussion Board.

First, I often enjoy modeling entries, responses, etc., through a "fictional" student.  That's the weird part.

For example, I teach my students how to develop and maintain blogs.  In each class, I create a "guest student" blog and then I submit a series of model posts for my students to follow. It works.  I don't think it's that weird.

Here is my question today:

Can I have my "guest student" participate in Canvas discussions.  My students know him/her from our blog assignments. 

Here is the thing:  I won't have a campus email. Can I get by with a gmail account?

Please let me know.

Thank you in advance.

Paz,

JL

[rmurchshafer · Accepted solution]

Jay,

It depends a lot on how your school has Canvas set up.  Some schools will not allow for guest accounts like this to be created so you'll want to check with them.

But I do have a different option which might work.  Have you ever used the Student View option in your course?  When you do it creates an account named Test Student which for most part behaves like a normal student account.  You could use this to post as that "guest student" in a similar manner to what you describe.

Rick

[jay_lewenstein]

Thank you Rick,

I love how quickly you guys respond.

I'm going to try that "test student" technique. Thank You!

This afternoon, I practiced responding to a Discussion Board prompt that includes viewing a youtube clip from a historical film. I chose the death scene from Bonnie and Clyde.

Here, I'm trying to encourage my students to use open-ended questions. In this assignment, I ask them to submit thought-provoking questions for their classmates.

Below I show you what the response of my "guest student" looks like. I provide a SNIP of a partial submission. I was able to upload her picture from an image file to the top of her reply. I use her writing as a model for my students. That's not bad, but I look forward to trying out your suggestion.

Thank you for all you do.

Paz,

JL