Teachers not able to Remove Students from Courses

[GideonWilliams]

Here is a real conundrum.

In courses that I created using the SIS Import, teachers are not able to remove students. Their role is a teacher but when they click on the dots in People, the drop down only shows:

Prior to using SIS Import, staff made their own courses and in those courses they can remove students. The drop down box in their courses shows this:

I have checked the Permissions and they have not changed. The only thing I have done differently is prevent staff from creating courses.

Some of our staff are students in professional development courses but am sure this should not cause the issue.

Staff can still add students to their course!!!

Any help would be VERY gratefully received

Thanks

[chriscas · Accepted solution]

Hi @GideonWilliams,

What you're running into here is I believe a "working as designed" thing.  The Course Permissions Document has the following note around permissions to add/remove users: "Enrollments may be added by your institution student information system (SIS). If an enrollment is created via SIS, only admins can remove the enrollment from the course."

If you'd like teachers to be able to remove users from the course, you may need to enroll those users via some kind of API automation rather than using the sis_import.  I'm pretty sure Instructure coded things this way to ensure that sis syncs from things like PeopleSoft, Banner, PowerSchool, etc function correctly and official roster enrollments don't get changed.  I wouldn't personally be opposed to some kind of additional permission to allow changes to sis-based enrollments, but I have to imagine improper use of that permission could really mess things up for some schools and Instructure might not want to go down that road at all.

Hope this info at least helps a bit!

-Chris

[chriscas · Accepted solution]

Hi @GideonWilliams,

What you're running into here is I believe a "working as designed" thing.  The Course Permissions Document has the following note around permissions to add/remove users: "Enrollments may be added by your institution student information system (SIS). If an enrollment is created via SIS, only admins can remove the enrollment from the course."

If you'd like teachers to be able to remove users from the course, you may need to enroll those users via some kind of API automation rather than using the sis_import.  I'm pretty sure Instructure coded things this way to ensure that sis syncs from things like PeopleSoft, Banner, PowerSchool, etc function correctly and official roster enrollments don't get changed.  I wouldn't personally be opposed to some kind of additional permission to allow changes to sis-based enrollments, but I have to imagine improper use of that permission could really mess things up for some schools and Instructure might not want to go down that road at all.

Hope this info at least helps a bit!

-Chris

[GideonWilliams]

Chris

Once again you come up with the good - brilliant.

"Working as Design", mmm! Bizarre you can add students but not able to remove them. Means more manual work for me I think in the main.

I guess you can't have the SIS Import feature all your own way, but it feels another example of something that really should be an option you can choose. After all, it must have been turned off in order to create courses in this manner. 

[chriscas · Accepted solution]

Hi @GideonWilliams,

One thing you could try (I can't easily test this without changing our configs in our beta/test environment)...  When you do the sis_import, select the "override UI changes" and then the "process as UI changes" checkboxes.  That *may* make the enrollments seem like they came from the UI and let teachers delete them.  I think it's meant to affect fields like the name more than the enrollment origination, but there's a change it could work.  if it does, please do come back and update here!

-Chris

[GideonWilliams]

Sadly it did not work. It sounded like it really should have. Must be others things 'in the way'. Many thanks for the suggestion.