Canvas Integration with SIS - Processing Faculty Reassignments

[SusanDarlington]

Hi all,

After years of manual CSV file uploads, we are finally integrating Canvas with our Student Information System (Workday).

When a faculty is reassigned from a course, because we were manual, we were able to create a copy of the course for them in a Term where we placed cancelled and reassigned courses.  Departments notified us of every course addition, cancellation, and reassignment.

Now that we will be automated, instructors will be removed from the Canvas course space, and the new instructor will now have access to the original instructor's Canvas course content.  We can certainly show faculty how to export their course content to Save it.  Our concern is that a new instructor will have access to the course content of the prior instructor.  This will not be acceptable for faculty.

How do other institutions handle this?

Thank you!

[mzimmerman · Accepted solution]

Hi @SusanDarlington 

Just to clarify, do instructors re-use course shells in your Canvas instance, or do you create new course shells each term?

When we first started integrating with our SIS (way too many years ago to count!...), we made the choice to create new course shells for each section, and for each term in which the course was taught.  There was some concern about the number of course shells that resulted, but it has vastly simplified our processes to have new shells created every term.

Of course, even if you create new course shells every term, it is possible that an instructor will be assigned to a course, copy their course materials into the new course, and then the course will be re-assigned to a different instructor before the term actually starts.  (Faculty assignments changing in the middle of the term is a whole different issue...)

In our case, that does not happen often enough to be a concern, and instructors are generally aware of what's going on if they are replacing another faculty member in a course, but if it were a major issue for your faculty, you might look at limiting the window that instructors have to copy materials into their courses, or how far in advance you add instructors to courses in the new term.

[SusanDarlington · Accepted solution]

Thank you for responding!  We also create new course shells for every section, every semester.  We seem to have an inordinate number of reassignments!  

We have decided to encourage faculty to Export their course once they create it so that it is saved.  And for faculty to use the Reset option if they need to remove the content of another instructor.  

[mzimmerman · Accepted solution]

Hi @SusanDarlington 

Just to clarify, do instructors re-use course shells in your Canvas instance, or do you create new course shells each term?

When we first started integrating with our SIS (way too many years ago to count!...), we made the choice to create new course shells for each section, and for each term in which the course was taught.  There was some concern about the number of course shells that resulted, but it has vastly simplified our processes to have new shells created every term.

Of course, even if you create new course shells every term, it is possible that an instructor will be assigned to a course, copy their course materials into the new course, and then the course will be re-assigned to a different instructor before the term actually starts.  (Faculty assignments changing in the middle of the term is a whole different issue...)

In our case, that does not happen often enough to be a concern, and instructors are generally aware of what's going on if they are replacing another faculty member in a course, but if it were a major issue for your faculty, you might look at limiting the window that instructors have to copy materials into their courses, or how far in advance you add instructors to courses in the new term.

[SusanDarlington · Accepted solution]

Thank you for responding!  We also create new course shells for every section, every semester.  We seem to have an inordinate number of reassignments!  

We have decided to encourage faculty to Export their course once they create it so that it is saved.  And for faculty to use the Reset option if they need to remove the content of another instructor.  

[chriscas · Accepted solution]

Hi @SusanDarlington,

That is essentially what we do as well.  In the past we considered, as it appears you are, having out automation create course shells based on the course/section/instructor instead of just the course/section because of content copyright.  As we considered all of the different scenarios and timings, we discovered so many edge cases where this method would create too much chaos (what if instructors changed in the middle of a term? what about a week in? students may lose work and grades, courses could disappear form their dashboards if the new one isn't published, how would instructors get prior grades, etc) that we abandoned the idea.  It may be different for others, but I guess we saw the overall experience for students and teachers as more important than a teacher getting unauthorized access to the material of a peer.

-Chris