Create a Course for Student Data

[lhenson]

Currently all of the students' state or diagnostic test results are located on several different platforms that the students don't have access to. I have a secondary principal who is wanting her students to take ownership of their test results and has asked if there is a way for them to access the data, so I am trying to think of a way to create some sort of 'One Stop Shop' for them. I was reading some blogs and came across an idea about using Canvas to upload their data as an assignment with no submission.

In my head, I am thinking a Campus-Wide course with an assignment for each test. Yes, everything would have to be done manually, but we are not a very large district, so I THINK this would be doable.

Has anyone ever tackled anything like this before or does anyone have another solution that might be better and a little more secure. I am a little concerned about FERPA here. The students SHOULD be able to only see their own 'grades' and there isn't a reason to add to teachers to the course. I can add admin to the course and not worry about FERPA - they have access to every students' data anyway through all of the platforms. 

Higher up admin may shoot the idea down due to privacy issues, but trying to see if this is even an option at all.

[Jeff_F · Accepted solution]

Hello @lhenson - so long as you have skill with the Gradebook export/ import feature and are very good with merging data sets between Excel files, I don't envision any issues. You already have a plan for creating the assignments which will create the gradebook column. Students are enrolled as students and would therefore only see grades for themselves. Perhaps before you get started it would be an important step to check the data sources from the diagnostic test results: what identifiers do these results have for the students: just name or perhaps school email, student id number (SIS ID), etc.? For this to work well you'll want to be sure the gradebook export and the data file you want to merge both have a common data field. Otherwise, the data merge process would be labor intensive and probably error prone should there be more than a few hundred students.

One additional suggestion is to limit persons with root account admin access. Then create a subaccount under the root and limit who has admin access to that subaccount. For example, yourself and the person(s) you report to. That approach greatly limits access to the course.