School Board Access to Canvas Course Content

[smith1]

Our school board members have requested access to our Canvas instance. Their purpose is to better understand what is being taught at our school.

Has anyone else allowed their (non-parent) school board members to access Canvas? 

I have set up a bare bones administrative account. I only allow: 

• Course Content View
• Courses View List

When I login with my test account, with that access I also see Attendance, Item Banks, and Settings. 

Is there any way that I can remove this extra access, or it this part of the default admin account? 

Thanks for your help!

[SusanNiemeyer]

That's super intrusive. I'm guessing that your school board is full of zealous right-wingers who want to make sure that teachers aren't teaching anything "objectionable." I would not want to facilitate this.

If the school board just wants to see what Canvas is like, make a PowerPoint presentation about the features of the LMS. Alternatively, you can create a mock course for them to look at.

However, if you are going to give them direct access into an individual teacher's course content, then you really need to long and hard about this. It is an unreasonable request. As a teacher, I would feel very uncomfortable with this. 

This is not a question of how to grant this access, but rather whether to grant this access. There are philosophical questions to address beyond the technical ones.

[smith1]

Hi Susan, 

Thank you for your thoughtful and insightful response. I have presented to the board several times on Canvas courses, but I do like your idea of a presentation that they can go back to and look at. I will also share your comments with our administrative team. This request comes up again and again from the board. We have said no repeatedly, but they are tenacious with their agenda. I just want to be prepared to provide minimal access, no student information, and no quiz or test access (as a few board members are parents too). 

Have a great day!

Donna

[SusanNiemeyer]

@smith1 

Given that the school board is making this inquiry, you can direct them to the curriculum and books that are being taught. You can also direct them to the course standards. Perhaps, the department could jointly provide a mock Canvas module of a unit for the school board officials to examine.

WHAT YOU SHOULD NOT DO UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES is give them access to individual teachers' courses. Hiding the students' personal information is not enough. You must also protect your teachers from unreasonable scrutiny. 

Do your teachers have a union? (My guess is that is that you are probably in a right-to-work state where teachers have little power and few rights.)

You must protect your teachers. Find a reasonable alternative (e.g. curriculum, books, and standards) and stand your ground. 

[SusanNiemeyer]

This level of intrusiveness is really akin to setting up cameras in the classroom. It's an unreasonable request.

[BradMoser]

I can appreciate that your school board wants to have some visibility into the teaching and learning that takes place online. And my guess is, that they probably also review other curricular things and walk through classrooms at times to see what's taking place. I think you would need to be mindful not to grant access to all settings. The way I would consider providing this type of access would either be on a request of certainly "classes" and in which case, you could make add them as an Observer in the class similar to how you add parents, but not have them linked to any one particular student. 

Alternatively, you could create an Admin Account with permissions only to grant them content view access with the Course Content - view enabled. I believe this would provide the limited access you are looking for. See image below. 

 

Good luck!

[Chris_Hofer]

@smith1 ...

@BradMoser mentioned a "view" role.  When I was a Canvas admin in higher education, we had a "Viewer" role set up for our instructors for "master" courses.  I'm not sure if any of this would work for your needs, but here's a blog post I wrote about it:

Our Custom "Viewer" Role for "Master" Courses - Instructure Community (canvaslms.com)