Alias/Nickname Option for Transgender Students (Private to Parent/Observer)

[schoolcounselor]

To ensure our students feel safe on Canvas, Canvas should have a way for students to indicate their preferred name that is not public to parents who access the parent portal. Currently, students have the option to change their Display, Sortable, and Full Name on Canvas, however, all of these names are public to parents. Our transgender students often feel unsafe using the name and pronouns that align with their gender identity around their parents; in Canvas, they cannot differentiate the way their name is seen to teachers compared to parents. Similar to Aeries, it would be helpful to allow students who do not want to disclose their preferred name to their parents, but would like their teachers to know their "alias" or "nickname".

As a school counselor, I hope that Canvas can give students this option, so that our transgender students feel safe and have their name be honored.

[Stef_retired]

@schoolcounselor 

Thanks for sharing this idea. As it moves forward for broader discussion, your teachers might consider asking students to provide their pronoun information to them securely and directly through a form submission or a text entry assignment. The teachers can then use the Notes column of their gradebooks to enter the information for later reference; the Notes column is only visible to the instructor.

[ProductPanda]

Comments from Instructure

As part of the new Ideas & Themes process, all ideas in Idea Conversations were reviewed by the Product Team. Any Idea that was associated with an identified theme was moved to the new Idea & Themes space. Any Idea that was not part of the move is being marked as Archived. This will preserve the history of the conversations while also letting Community members know that Instructure will not explore the request at this time.