Set Observer role to only view grades

[vljohnson]

Hello, 

I have a group that wants to view only their athletes grades in Canvas. I was trying to create a role in Canvas, which can only view students' grades. I was trying to base it off of the Observer and student role, but nothing is working. They mention that they were able to do it at another school but they had a programmer that did an API. We don't have anyone to do that.

Can it be done from Permissions? Any reason, this is not a good ideal....FERPA? Any suggestions are greatly appreciated?

Thanks,

Vicky J

[Jeff_F · Accepted solution]

Hello @vljohnson - yes, this can be done: create an course role that permits approved faculty / staff to view (but not edit) student grades. Create it based on the TA course role. Here are the permissions I've assigned the same type of role at my institution. And yes, you are correct about the FERPA question. It may be of concern. Best to touch base with your legal team to confirm you are in safe harbor.

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But if you want to be a heroine, think about the work process the athletics advising staff would have to pursue. They would need to search for each student or manually navigate to each student's course and then click into it to access the information. Again, for each student.

Because of that overhead we created an Early Warning Report using Canvas Data. This dashboard is accessed by the College and advising leadership and the data is shared with the advising teams for outreach to occur. But Canvas Data takes time, people, etc. to set up.

Another approach is Instructure's new Intelligent Insights tool, as this tool has a similar feature where students in need of assistance are identified. I am thinking that someone would run the report, export students who are in need of assistance, then a comparison between that list and the list of student athletes can occur. For example, a low programming approach is to use Excel:  enter the student ID numbers or email addresses from both lists and use the Excel check for duplicates command. That way you can more quickly obtain and process the data.

https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Intelligent-Insights-Guides/What-is-Intelligent-Insights/ta-p/608...

[Jeff_F · Accepted solution]

Hello @vljohnson - yes, this can be done: create an course role that permits approved faculty / staff to view (but not edit) student grades. Create it based on the TA course role. Here are the permissions I've assigned the same type of role at my institution. And yes, you are correct about the FERPA question. It may be of concern. Best to touch base with your legal team to confirm you are in safe harbor.

---------------

But if you want to be a heroine, think about the work process the athletics advising staff would have to pursue. They would need to search for each student or manually navigate to each student's course and then click into it to access the information. Again, for each student.

Because of that overhead we created an Early Warning Report using Canvas Data. This dashboard is accessed by the College and advising leadership and the data is shared with the advising teams for outreach to occur. But Canvas Data takes time, people, etc. to set up.

Another approach is Instructure's new Intelligent Insights tool, as this tool has a similar feature where students in need of assistance are identified. I am thinking that someone would run the report, export students who are in need of assistance, then a comparison between that list and the list of student athletes can occur. For example, a low programming approach is to use Excel:  enter the student ID numbers or email addresses from both lists and use the Excel check for duplicates command. That way you can more quickly obtain and process the data.

https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Intelligent-Insights-Guides/What-is-Intelligent-Insights/ta-p/608...

[vljohnson · Accepted solution]

Thank you.  I am trying it now and will let you know how it goes.