Observer for a group of students?

[paula_d_levy]

I am a case manager for about 20 students.  I would love to be able to be an observer for each of my students, in all their classes.  Is there a way to do that easily?  I don't want each teacher to have to add me and the other case managers as an observer individually for each student, that would be too much work.

[Hildi_Pardo]

Hi Paula,

Unfortunately there is not an easy way to do it.  The way you described (adding each of you as Observers and linking to the students you observe) is the way to do it.

In our district we created a role (actually two roles) called "Non Editing Teacher" -- on is "Non Editing Teacher with Grades" the other is "Non Editing Teacher No Grades."    These roles allow a teacher to add a colleague to their course and view everything in the course (but not be able to edit anything). Obviously the "Grades" part keeps that part private.   This role would allow adding an observing teacher without the extra step of linking to a child.     It could be something to discuss at your district.

[mzimmerman]

Hi @paula_d_levy 

An observer pairing can be done by the instructor to pair an observer with a student in a single class.  It can also be done by the student, or by the Canvas admin, to pair an observer with a student for all of their classes, as is done for parents.

There is some general information about student/observer pairing at

https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Canvas-Resource-Documents/Observer-Account-Creation-and-Pairing/t...

and instructions for the student to generate a pairing code to let you link to them as an observer at

https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Observer-Guide/How-do-I-link-a-student-to-my-user-account-as-an-o... 

[Hildi_Pardo]

Hi @mzimmerman -- I think there is a difference between an Observer Account (parents) and an Observer Course Role.   The pairing code that students generate, I think only are for parents who create Parent Observer accounts.  In the case of Paula, she doesn't have a parent account, but rather is Staff and is being enrolled in a course with a Role of Observer.     I'm not sure if a student can give the pairing code to the Staff person (?? but maybe yes??)

[mzimmerman · Accepted solution]

Hi @Hildi_Pardo 

You are right that there is a difference between being an Observer, and having an Observer role in a particular course.

However, I believe that what makes a user and Observer is being linked to a student.  There is not really anything different about the user account itself being given to a staff member, or being given to a parent.  

Some schools allow self-registration so that parents can create their own accounts with local Canvas credentials rather than using school SSO credentials, but the user accounts themselves are not really different, and some schools set up counselors, advisors, etc. (who have Canvas accounts automatically created, just like students and faculty) as "observers" for the students assigned to them, very similar to what @paula_d_levy wants to do.

A user can be paired with a student by the administrator, or by using a pairing code generated by the student (or the admin?) which is not course-specific.

[petern]

yes, @mzimmerman is correct.  You can become an observer for multiple students.  Easiest way is asking the Canvas admin to do this by SIS.  They need to upload a file like this:

observer_id	student_id	status
paula	alice	active
paula	bob	active
paula	clarisa	active
paula	devon	active
paula	erica	active
paula	freddie	active

[garrett_william]

Do you have an example of how to unlink student and observer?

[EricLaCroix]

Yes - you would use the same file format, but change "active" to "deleted." I'm doing this today for outdated observer-student pairings. I downloaded all pairings by selecting "observers" as the only option in Admin > Settings > Reports > Provisioning... Gave me a CSV of every single observer and student pairing in our instance. I'm cleaning up that file and re-importing with just the two IDs and the word "deleted" for each one that I want to deactivate.

[Hildi_Pardo]

That makes me wonder about pros and cons -- if done as a file upload it may be less work for a teacher, but could potentially add a lot of requests for a Canvas admin. In our district, staff observers can change many times during a school year.  Also, when enrollments are done as a File Upload, teachers cannot remove those observers if that staff person is no longer observing their student, and the teacher and observer would have to wait for someone with system admin to remove them.  But if they add them manually, I think they also should be able to remove them manually.   It's good to know the different angles or unforeseen consequences.

[EricLaCroix]

Hildi_Pardo, did you find a solution as flexible as what you outlined? I'm in the same situation - being asked to generate observer-student pairings administratively - because we haven't been able to find a different way to accomplish the goal. I did find a post with about 30 comments asking for the super secret hidden workaround that apparently has not been posted anywhere publicly... so I'm guessing it's magically simple...