Using the Canvas Calendar for student societies

[PaulBiggs]

Hi there,

Fairly new with Canvas at my University in the UK. We have had some requests from out Student Union and they would like to use the Canvas Calendar independently of a Course or Organisation space. From looking online it looks like this isn't possible. It has to be related to a specific course area. Does anyone have any examples or case studies where they have set up areas? For example, student societies etc...I would be keen to get an idea of what is possible. I am guessing whatever the setup there will be a degree of admin involved in keeping everything up to date. 

Thanks, Paul. 

[lsorroche]

Hello @PaulBiggs It's an interesting request. The only way I think this could work for you is to create a course for the Students' Union and then use its calendar. This would require that all students who need to use this calendar be enrolled in that course.

[PaulBiggs]

Thanks for the reply @lsorroche really helpful. Do you get many requests to use Canvas outside of the standard course set up? Our students are quite keen to use Canvas for more than just learning, I think they like the idea of having a student community on there. Which is great, it just raises questions around the best way of setting it up. I think whatever we do, we will feed back to Instructure, to see if it could be made more flexible. 

[lsorroche]

Hi @PaulBiggs ,

At our institution, I haven't heard of any requests to use the calendar outside of a course. However, I think this would be an excellent update for the calendar tool.

By the way, you've raised an interesting point: providing students with tools and spaces to build their own community within the virtual Canvas environment.

[PaulBiggs]

Great, thanks @lsorroche good to know that it will help the wider Canvas community and there's wider interest in using the calendar in different ways. Thanks for your reply. 

[dbrace]

Hi @PaulBiggs,

At my institution we have a "custom" setup (it is not really that involved) that looks like this:

1. each academic year, I create a "Student Life" course and the previous year's course is added into it and adjustments are made
2. every student (in the semesters/terms that are actively being track) that has more than 0 enrolled credit hours is automatically enrolled into this course as a student (see #4 below) during a nightly scheduled job
3. every faculty member that has been assigned to teach something (in the semesters/terms that are actively being tracked) are automatically enrolled into the course as a student (see #4 below) during a nightly scheduled job
4. we have two "custom" student roles that prevent messaging other students in a course from the Canvas Inbox
   1. one role is for actual students
   2. one role is for faculty that are enroll as student
   3. we use both so that we can tell who is a "real" student and who is a "real" teacher
5. we use this for announcements and sharing general campus information about activities and opportunities
6. the course has between 6 and 10 people that have "teacher" access in the course to make changes, create content, and post announcements

We also have "Student Life Groups" (which might be similar to your societies) types of courses. In these courses we give the group's advisor "facilitator" access (a custom role based on "teacher" that allows for enrolling Canvas user accounts as a "student" in the course, which is something we do not allow in our "regular" courses) and a couple of trustworthy students (usually president, vice president, secretary) that are leaders of the group are given "student facilitator" access (a custom role based on "teacher" that allows for enrolling students but without the ability to see PII). Basically these courses serve as an area for the groups to organize themselves, share files, and have discussions.

I hope both of these models help you brainstorm options.

Let me know if you have any questions and I will answer them either publicly or in a private message.

-Doug

[PaulBiggs]

Thanks @dbrace I think what the user really wanted is to use the calendar independently of any course or organisation structure. But it looks like this isn't possible. But I really appreciate your reply, which will help me adjust their expectations and possibly set up a course/organisation type structure.

[dbrace]

You are welcome, @PaulBiggs.

It would require elevated access (a type of admin account/access) but have you considered using Account Calendars?

How do I view and manage Account Calendars? - Instructure Community - 617598

How do I manage Account Calendars? - Instructure Community - 546233

-Doug

[PaulBiggs]

Thanks @dbrace for raising that. I'm not sure that access would be granted for Account Calendars but I will look into it.