Can a student also be a TA?

[BarbaraPorwit]

We have a program that spans both undergrad and medical students and we are developing a scholar-led CANVAS site for the program. Scholars themselves will be managing a decent amount of the content. Cana student also be a TA so this can be accomplished?

[jerry_nguyen]

@BarbaraPorwit 

Yes, a user enrolled in a Canvas course can be assigned multiple roles 

[chriscas]

@BarbaraPorwit,

Can you clarify whether you want a person to be a student and a TA in the same Canvas course, or whether you mean they'd be a student in one course and a TA in another course?

If the former, which @jerry_nguyen's comment is technically correct that you can give a user more than one role in a single course, there are going to be some caveats to go along with that.  External tools can be problematic in this scenario (Turnitin, for example, has the student role trump other roles, so when creating an assignment the Turnitin options wouldn't show up for a dual-role user).  As an admin, I'd really advise to not give people dual roles in a single course, even if Canvas does technically allow it.

If it's the second scenario where a student is just being added as a TA into a single course shell but is not enrolled as a student in that shell, you should have no issues.

-Chris

[BarbaraPorwit]

Well there won't be anything graded per se but we have a Peer Engagement Committee which might send out things like RSVPs for events or surveys/forms that they need their peers to fill out on various initiatives they are leading from within. Does this still sound like a conflict?

[chriscas]

Hi @BarbaraPorwit,

It's hard to say for sure without more clarification.  Can you let us know if you want the user to be both a student and a TA in the course at the same time?  Sorry for continuing to ask, but the term student can mean a lot of different things when people say it, so it's important to know what you mean.  If you're saying student in the broad sense that the person is a learner at your school/institution, but would be a TA in this course, then that should work fine.  if you want a user who can both be a student in this course (submit assignments, get grades, etc) and create content within the course, that's where the complications and problems can arise and would be something I would not recommend.

Hope this helps clarify my comments a bit.

-Chris

[BarbaraPorwit]

Hi Chris:

this is a "non credit" course that is essentially an internal program website for scholars to get program updates and share things with each other.

So it's going to be partially scholar driven, ie leadership from within the ranks of the scholars who are in the program itself.

So scholars will likely be setting up some of the same events that they also need to RSVP for personally, for instance.

Or setting up surveys that they themselves need to send their own responses to

Or sending out announcements that they themselves need to receive or calendar entries etc

Some of the scholars in leadership roles who need the kind of editing access TAs have will also need to be in their own scholar "group" or "groups" depending on their level in the program (UG1, UG2, MS1, MS2, ALL UG Scholars, ALL MS Scholars, Prepping for MCAT, Applying to Med School, etc)

Does this help?

Some of the scholars are undergrad students, some of them are medical students. (the program spans pre-med through med school for scholars enrolled in th program)

[chriscas · Accepted solution]

Hi @BarbaraPorwit,

That's helpful, especially the "setting up surveys that they themselves need to send their own responses to" part.  That's the sticky thing where a user is going to have to have multiple roles in the course to accomplish.  So technically there are ways to accomplish this (add the user to the course twice, once as a student and once as a TA, for example), but I would personally recommend against this if at all possible for some of the reasons I stated earlier.  When we have had to do this for specific scenarios in the past, Canvas Support had even recommended against it since it's a very edge case in their coding.

It may work out fine if you go that direction, but you may run into things that don't work like you'd hope with the multiple roles.  It'll probably be something you'd need to test all of your expectations for before rolling it out if you want to move forward.  Depending on how your Canvas login system works, a possible alternative would be to make alternate accounts for the dual enrolled users...  Use their regular account for one role (student or ta) and an alternate account for the other role.  They'd just need to log in with the correct account based on what they are trying to do in the course at that moment.

Hope this helps!

-Chris