Programme name in course roster

[VPundir]

As an Instructor, when I visit the People page (Course Roster), I can see the list of people and can filter to see the list of students.  

My course is offered to students enrolled in a broad range of programmes. Occasionally, I have to reach out to the Programme Leader to discuss a student. Unfortunately, the Course Roster does not show which programme the student belongs to, creating a bunch of logistical challenges. 

Am I missing something? If so, I would appreciate guidance.

If it is currently not possible to view the students' programme in the Course Roster, then I have 3 alternative approaches as requests:

1. Add a column/field "Programme" to the Course Roster so that the student's programme is visible right away.
2. If #1 is not possible, how about adding the "Programme" field to the students' respective profile pages, so that at least the information is a single click away from the Course Roster?
3. If #2 is not possible either, then on the students' respective profile pages, could you show ALL the student's Enrolments, and not just those for my modules? We do enroll our students in a Canvas course named after the programme so that they have programme-related information in a single place.

[JeffCampbell · Accepted solution]

This seems more like the kind of information that would be very useful for your institution, but less practical on the site overall. This is essentially asking for a field to be added to the Canvas site that it specific to how your school operates. Do you get a roster from your institution outside of Canvas? Since this is not normally something tracked via Canvas, I would suspect that they have a system that tracks enrollment and a student's Programme. You might inquire if that system can generate a roster for you that includes the information you request.

Another thing you could consider doing is implementing a survey at the start of your course. It could be done on the first or second day of class. In that survey, you could not only build in a question asking for them to identify their Programme, but you could even put something in where they identify their Programme Leader. You could then easily look up a student's program as needed.

[Maeve_McCooey]

Agree @VPundir the lack of Programme-level functionality and/or information is a massive gap in Canvas! It might be worthwhile adding this to the ideas area of the community 🤔 😀 

[VPundir]

@Maeve_McCooey Done! https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Canvas-Ideas/Program-level-features/idi-p/592749 

[Maeve_McCooey]

Good Work! Fingers crossed it is picked up in a Theme at some stage 😁

[JeffCampbell · Accepted solution]

This seems more like the kind of information that would be very useful for your institution, but less practical on the site overall. This is essentially asking for a field to be added to the Canvas site that it specific to how your school operates. Do you get a roster from your institution outside of Canvas? Since this is not normally something tracked via Canvas, I would suspect that they have a system that tracks enrollment and a student's Programme. You might inquire if that system can generate a roster for you that includes the information you request.

Another thing you could consider doing is implementing a survey at the start of your course. It could be done on the first or second day of class. In that survey, you could not only build in a question asking for them to identify their Programme, but you could even put something in where they identify their Programme Leader. You could then easily look up a student's program as needed.

[chriscas · Accepted solution]

Hi @VPundir,

I agree with almost everything that @JeffCampbell said around this.  While the info might be important to you (or even your whole school), there is probably somewhere outside of Canvas that it's pretty easily available to you.  I'm sure making it available in Canvas would be easier for you, but there is a fine line that Instructure I'm sure considers with things like this.  If they put a "program" filed, what about one for grade, then someone might want student phone numbers, what about their address, their advisor's name, etc...  As you can see, it could quickly get out of hand.  As a Canvas admin, I really prefer we keep a distinct line between a learning management system (Canvas) and a student information system, where all of this info usually lives.

Now, with all of that said, you may be surprised to learn that my institution actually has something very similar to your request in place.  Rather than being on the people page, which would be basically all custom coding prone to all kinds of issues, we used the custom gradebook column API to create a column in the gradebook for each course which is populated with a student's major.  It's probably not the most elegant solution, but it gets the job done for people who need it (especially around accreditation here).  I thought I'd throw this out as a possibility.

-Chris

 

[VPundir]

Hi @chriscas 

Thank you for taking the time to write the note and trying to help.

I do disagree with the notion that the requested information/ feature is an edge case important to only to me (or my school). This is a common use-case particularly in British HE institutions.

Why is there a need for a bright line between the VLE and SIS, esp. considering that when these system do exist separately, there if often a complex and expensive drive to ensure "integration" between the two systems, or at least to make sure the systems talk to each other? In any case, while the SIS is useful for administrators such as Admissions, Finance, International, etc., it is rarely, if ever, accessible to the teaching teams - and even if it were, the proliferation of software-jungle with lots of disparate software is not much appreciated by or helpful to functional teams that are trying to focus on teaching and academic leadership.

I also reject the slippery slope argument. A VLE needs program-level features - please see my link in the post above. As you know Blackboard does Institutional Hierarchies https://www.blackboard.com/sites/default/files/2020-11/Blackboard-Learn-Configuration-Best-Practice-... Moodle does it via a plugin https://moodle.org/plugins/enrol_programs 

It is interesting that your institution has something similar to my request in place - though in gradebook rather than the course roster - I think that might go some way in demonstrating that my request is far from an edge-case. Funding at most British universities is much lower, with skeletal technical teams compared to American universities, even state universities. I wonder whether your institution might consider releasing its solution under open source licensing?

[JeffCampbell]

Understanding that your SIS is not accessible to teaching teams, I can better understand why you desire this. Our SIS systems are available to all teachers in our district and used daily, so the relevant information can be looked up.