How to allow teachers to Start a Course on their dashboard?

[PittWu]

As Canvas admin, I've set up the permission at root account level for teachers to be able to add their own courses, however, staff who have a teacher role on Canvas simply could NOT Start a Course themselves.

They do not have a Start a Course option sitting on the right-hand side on their dashboard besides Marks

Is this some of the default settings on Canvas? How does an admin do to enable this feature for teachers?

[racole]

Do you have course settings available for teaachers to edit? This isn't done through the dashboard, but selecting Settings allows changes to the start/end date or can select to Publish the course.

[marvinordonez]

Hi @PittWu thank you for getting in touch. To get the "Start a New Course" option to appear for teachers, can you please try and enable the Courses - Manage permission. This is typically disabled by default.

How to Enable As a Canvas Admin

• Navigate to Admin > Account > Settings.
• Click the Permissions tab.
• Find Courses - Manage and check the box for the Teacher role.

Just a heads-up, it might take up to 30 minutes for the change to be visible on the teachers' dashboards.

Please let me know if this works, thanks!

[PittWu]

Hi Marvinordonez,

Thank you for getting back to me.

I've double checked the permissions; in Courses section, teachers do the FULL permission to Add/Delete/Manage courses. However, teachers still could not see this option, so I was asking the community to see if anyone encountered the same issue.

Cheers,

[chriscas · Accepted solution]

Hi @PittWu,

The button on the dashboard is not controlled by a permission as far as I know, rather it's at the bottom of your root account settings page (screenshot included)

You'll want to put a checkmark next to Teachers there, then save.  Once you do that, anyone with a teacher role in any course in your Canvas instance should see the button to start a new course on their dashboard.

I hope this helps!

-Chris

[PittWu]

Hi Chris,

Thanks for getting back to me, your solution works.

Thank you very much for your help!

Pitt

[kgalek]

My work around (as a person without admin access) has been to add teachers to a sandbox course as teachers. Then the system seems to recognize them as teachers who can create courses and the button appears.

[PittWu]

Hi Kgalek,

That's a great idea, a dummy course has been created sitting in Sandbox, they do have teacher role. To make sure they have teacher role, I search people with filter Teacher Role, and they do appear.

However, they do not have the option of Start a New Course which is super odd.

Cheers,

[DanGioiaAdmin]

You could create one unpublished sandbox course for each individual instructor and add them as an instructor for that sandbox course. This will create one identifiable course for each instructor and also identify them as existing instructors.