Grant Teachers Access to all Class Courses

[gary_molloy]

When a teacher is away they post the work via Canvas. We desire for replacement teachers to be able to view this work, handle any queries and mark attendance.

What is the best way to configure this to grant the necessary permissions.

[garth]

The way you have asked this question is not clear to me.

Are you asking if you can put an additional instructor in a course?

[gary_molloy]

Yes and No. The question is at a whole school level. When a teacher is away the General Coordinator will assign a random teacher to the class. The desire is for any teacher in the school to be able to see the work set. The requirement would be common to most schools.

[gary_molloy]

A potential work around would be to have a special class of announcement say "Work in Absence" that was visible to all teachers in the school, this could then cross posted to a stream that teachers could read.

My preference remains, however, that a "Visible Classrooms" solution be offered in keeping with the trend towards classroom observation and feedback.

[kona]

What we do is literally add the substitute teacher into the course as either an observer or teacher (depending on what they need to do). Once they are done subbing we take them out of the course.

For us this works because all of our subs already work at our Institution and have their own Canvas login information. If the subs don't have individual login information you could create a generic "Substitute" account/login and add this to the courses as needed or at the beginning of the semester.

[gary_molloy]

Kona,

I like it but with the myriad of reasons that lead to staff needing cover, we regularly have 20-40 lessons needing cover each day. The General Coordinator in a secondary school is extremely busy and so we need a fix at the system level.

[kona]

So why not have the substitute account added to every course at the beginning of the semester? That way whoever was subbing could log into the sub account, find the course they are subbing for, and then do anything they need to in the course.

[garth]

My only concern with a catch-all substitute account would be keeping track of who did what.

Managing transient staff / random access may also become a hot topic.

[gary_molloy]

Our expectation of short term replacement staff is that they be able to convey (or reaffirm) the work of the day and monitor any classroom activity ensuring that students stay on track. Whilst not a passive role, it is not expected that they take place in stead of the classroom teacher. There would be no place for content correction, marking, etc, this would be view only.

Again open access for view only would be wonderful from an open classrooms perspective offered at a school level with schools deciding at what layer the reveal happened and for who.

[gary_molloy]

With this type of access any casual teacher could be granted view only access to a very basic level of access for a day and/or week by the General Co-ordinator.

[Stef_retired]

 @gary_molloy ​, it sounds like this discussion has evolved from "How can I do this..." to "I would like to see this feature." You might want to submit your idea about an open-access view-only role to the Canvas Feature Ideas​ space after reading How do I create a new feature idea?​

[gary_molloy]

Perhaps. I would have thought that ensuring the continuity of a class in the absence of a teacher would be a core function designed into the system. We are hoping to piggyback on best practice.

[Stef_retired]

 @gary_molloy , since you're looking for a discussion of best practices, with the goal of unearthing a way this is already being accomplished in Canvas, I'm going to share your question with the K-12​ group which is where we'll find the most likely users of substitute teachers in this fashion.