Concluded students still able to access group spaces and view active students

[SupportUU]

We have encountered an issue that raises concerns about student privacy and course integrity. When students receive the status "concluded" in a course, they are still able to access access the course in a read-only mode. This is a good feature since they can access course content but cannot interact with the course, receive notifications, etc. If a concluded student were to click on People, they would not see any remaining students in the list.

However, we have recently discovered that students, when accessing previously assigned group spaces, can continued to view the names and profiles of other group members who are still actively enrolled in the course.

This becomes particularly problematic in cases where the concluded students have failed or not completed the course, as it can be a sensitive situation. The ability to access group spaces after course completion may expose them to information about peers still working in the course, which can feel stigmatizing and is potentially a privacy concern.

We have created a case with Instructure to lift the question, but the only way to keep students from viewing student names in the group page currently is to remove the student from the group manually or set an end date on the course, which would keep any students from accessing the course. Neither of these solutions are optimal and I am wondering if others have seen this issue and might have found a better way to allow concluded students to access old courses without being able to view students who are still active in the course?

[dbrace]

Hi @SupportUU,

You have done the right thing by reaching out to Instructure to have them look at this and work on it but I am not sure they will have a "quick" answer.

I am not sure how many other people or institutions have the same setup as you. I mention that because:

1. my institution does not conclude courses
2. my institution does not conclude student enrollments
3. my institution adds dates to every semester course and they are used instead of term dates
4. my institution does not allow students in a course before it starts
5. my institution does not allow students in a course after it ends

Maybe someone else will respond and have thoughts to share.

-Doug

[Gabriel33]

Like @dbrace, I am not familiar with your setup, in the sense of why would a student fails a course before it ends.

Still, have you tried using sections, assigning the "concluded" students to a new "concluded" section, and disabling the ability to interact with users of other sections?

See How do I limit a user to only interact with other ... - Instructure Community - 1211

Note that discussions (and pages) would be viewable by users of all sections, unless the faculty assigns them only to specific sections.