How many students can access a Canvas course at the same time?

[DeteesWuber]

Has anyone had experience with more than 450 students wanting to access a course at exactly the same time?

Unfortunately, we had the experience that more than 450 users could not access a course because the loading time for opening the course was too long. Students were asked to access a quiz in Canvas but the course was not even opened to them. 

So I wanted to ask if anyone has a similar scenario and has had negative experiences with it? Thanks.

[chriscas]

Hi @DeteesWuber,

I don't think I've ever seen any kind of hard number posted, but if you're using Instructure-hosted cloud Canvas, it should be pretty high.  Quizzes do seem to be one of the higher-load things in Canvas, and I do know I've heard issues with thousands of people trying to take a times quiz at exactly the same time, but I believe Instructure had tried to make that experience better and it should not be very common to have issues anymore.  With that being said, you're post is indicating Canvas itself wouldn't even load, so I don't think it was this issue with quizzes.  If you're on a self-hosted Canvas, then the answer would largely depend on the specs of that server (and I'd say you would be much more likely to run into an issue in this scenario).

Hope this helps a bit, even though it may not be an exact answer

-Chris

[DeteesWuber]

Hi @chriscas 

thanks for your answer. 

Perhaps there are others who have experienced something like this, or if you have no problems with large classes, I would also be interested 🙂