Multiple roles for one person

[PauliinaPunnone]

I found out today that it was possible for one person to have two roles in one course (teacher and student), which didn't allow them to access for example Item Banks. After changing the role to teacher only, they could access the banks. However, I believe it should not be possible to have two roles? At least when I tried this in my sandbox course, I could only have one role, teacher or student. How is it possible to have two roles?

[mzimmerman]

Hi @PauliinaPunnone 

Does the course have multiple sections in it?

In Canvas, and enrollment connects a user to a section, so I don't believe it is possible to have multiple roles in the same section.  However, when there are multiple sections in a particular course, I have seen people have different roles in different sections, particularly if the multiple sections are a result of cross-listing.

[Chris_Hofer · Accepted solution]

@mzimmerman ...

Actually, it is possible for someone to be enrolled as a Teacher and Student in the same section of one course.  For example, I was initially enrolled in my sandbox course as a Teacher, but then I manually enrolled myself as a Student via my e-mail address.  I refreshed my screen, and now I'm both a Teacher and a Student in the same section.

I had a situation a few years back where an instructor wanted to see exactly what a student would see in a third-party LTI (Turnitin, if I recall).  But, when the instructor tried to do grading for other assignments that also used the LTI, he was getting an error message because the Turntin LTI couldn't figure out if he was a Teacher or a Student.  As soon as we removed the Student role from his course and returned him only to a Teacher, things were fixed and he could grade again.

[PauliinaPunnone]

I tried this and I got two roles now in my sandbox course, thanks! 😄 

So, it is possible that someone could add a person with wrong role and try to correct this by adding this person again with the another role. Or like you said, that someone wants to see what the student sees. It's good to know that this might happen, if someone asks this in the future. Thank you so much! 🙂

[PauliinaPunnone]

Hi!

This course did not have sections, so that is why I got confused.

I did get two roles when I added myself again to my sandbox course as a student, so now I have two roles in my sandbox course. So that is one way of getting two roles, though I think that having two roles does more harm than good to be honest, especially if you are a teacher 😄

[sfintland]

We also have this situation where a user may be enrolled as teacher for one section of a course and a student for another section of a course (non-instructional school site for assessment purposes under one section and student role in another section in order to upload documents).  However, we have still found glitches where when trying submit a document, the user will get a submission failure message and any submission comments that were posted won't stick.  We are wondering if anyone else has experienced this?  Thx