Access Denied for Students when they Log in

[beffeltolman]

I'm an instructor using the free Canvas account. I have several students who have successfully enrolled in the class using the link I sent out but, shortly after, when they try to log in it now says "access denied" and they can't view the course. I've tried deleting and re-adding them to the course, having them use a different browser, use incognito mode, and clear their browser history/cache/cookies but the error message still pops up. How can I resolve this error?

[oneilllj]

Hi @beffeltolman 

I had a similar issue a while ago and it was because I had not published the course. Also, the users will need to create an account to access the course.

I hope this helps.

Jen

[beffeltolman]

Hi Jen,

Thanks for your response. The course says it's published and the majority of my students are able to access it. The students with problems do have accounts already as they were able to log in originally and they show up as having accepted their invitation. Something just went wrong after the initial sign up process for a couple students and I'm still trying to figure out what that is.

Jenna

[EmilyWhitfield]

For my students, when they get this message it is because they're trying to log in to the Paid Version website, not the Free-for-Teacher one, and they look almost identical.  In most cases I just send them a link to the actual log-in site and it resolves it: Log in to Canvas is the site you should use.  

Not saying that this is your issue, but might be worth seeing if that's the problem as with most of my students that is the issue.  🙂

[beffeltolman · Accepted solution]

Thanks, Emily. For one of my students the problem was similar to what you've said - they were using the wrong log in page. For two of my other students though, the problem was that they some how had two different accounts and when they tried to log in, it was connecting them to the account not associated with my class. I reached out to Canvas' support team and they were able to merge the students' accounts into one and that seems to have solved our problem!