Force Enroll Students

(4)

K12 students do not need the option to accept an invite to a course. When a teacher invites a student to a course, they need the option to force enroll the student into the course. Many times younger students will not accept the invite. This causes an issue with getting a student into a course. For other non-SIS created courses, the teacher needs the ability to for enrolling students from the People page. This would keep a K12 student from declining the invite because they don't want to be that course. 

21 Comments
awilliams
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni

Hey  @paul_goodenough ‌ great news! You can already do this in Canvas!

When you want users (students, faculty, or any other roles) enrolled in courses but you don't want them to have to go through the invite process, you can use SIS uploads to "force enroll." This can also save a bunch of time. Check out https://community.canvaslms.com/docs/DOC-10741-67952724613 and let us know if you have any questions. For now I am going to archive this idea since I believe the functionality you are looking for already exists.

paul_goodenough
Community Explorer

awilliams‌ I am aware of the ability for Admins to use SIS imports to batch upload students and force enroll users. But the request is for teachers to have this ability. For other non-SIS created courses, the teacher needs the ability to for enrolling students from the People page. This would keep a K12 student from declining the invite because they don't want to be that course. 

awilliams
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni

Thanks for the additional details and for clarifying the request  @paul_goodenough . I have opened it back up. Would you mind adding some of those additional details to the idea description?

donray
Community Novice

I am an admin at a University and sometimes I need to add one or two people and don't want to do a bulk load.  But I don't want them to have to accept the course every time.  I should have the option to enroll them and they not have to accept it.  This would save a lot of time on my part.  I wouldn't have to explain to each of them what that means and that they want to accept it or they can't get into the course. Smiley Happy

kmeeusen
Community Champion

Hi  @paul_goodenough  

I have got to admit that I mostly hate the whole "Invitation" process. Very little value, and the functionality is cumbersome. Yes, I will want to accept the invitation, but I seldom want to be immediately navigated to the course, and if I ignore the invite until later, I typically log out of Canvas without remembering to go back to the dashboard to accept the dang thing.

cms_hickss
Community Contributor

I think it would be nice if there was an option on the "add people" area that included a checkbox for "enroll without sending invitation." Especially since there could be instances where you want a user to acknowledge being invited into the course; and other times when you just want them automatically enrolled on add.

Note, I also think there needs to be tracking (a timestamp) so a teacher or admin can see when a user denies an invite. 

michelle_curran
Community Novice

I would also appreciate an option to add a student to a course without the requirement of them accepting the invitation.  

rake_9
Community Champion

The invite acceptance requirement is one of the reasons we implemented our own "Add Participants" process.  Too easy to miss or ignore the emails; too many concerns about clicking links in unsolicited emails; doesn't align with many of the workflows associated with "non-academic" courses.

Also, timestamps in the system, visible to instructors and admins would be really great!

ericwerth
Community Explorer

I would like to see this option as well.  As described by  @donray , we have a number of "courses" set up for collaborative groups or training purposes.  Faculty or staff are added to the courses manually by admins (faculty don't have this ability), and there is no need for them to accept the course invitation.  It looks like this is similar to an archived idea, https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/1699?sr=search&searchId=90e1a0cd-d2ae-4a66-8d16-c3c52d32c5fe&s...‌, so hopefully more folks vote this up and it gets traction!

cms_hickss
Community Contributor

I've been thinking about this and there is another issue with forcing an enrollment, the teacher or admin enrolls the wrong user. Example, you mean to enroll Bob Smith, but the Bob Smith you want is really Robert Smith and instead someone else (Bob) has been enrolled by mistake.

With the invite the user just ignores/declines it. With a force enroll the user now sees this course on their dashboard and has no idea who s/he was enrolled. S/he has to figure out who to contact to get  out of the course. And, depending on the user and course, this can create a panic.

If you are going to force enroll that enrollment should probably come with a message (sent to the conversations box and then sent out per the user's notification settings) that the user has been "forced" enrolled into COURSE NAME HERE.

ericwerth
Community Explorer

I can see the value in a message being sent to the individual indicating they have been force enrolled in the class.  When I enroll a user manually I normally do that now, and have to explain that they should see the course invitation so if it is generated automatically that would save me even more time. 

If someone is enrolled in error and they are sent a message, hopefully this will prompt them to respond if they know there was an error.  In your example, there would be another Bob Smith who needs to be in the class that isn't.  If someone just ignores the invitation, the other individual could be equally panicked they are not in a class they should be!

tross
Community Champion

Definitely agree would be great in a K-12 environment.   Even when I may mass load students for a course, the instructor may want to add a few.  For example, our counselors often create courses and we don't generate them from the SIS.  I can mass load the students assigned to them but if a new student enrolls the next day, they don't have the course.  The counselors have found that students hit that decline button quickly because they aren't expecting it and and then they have to go find them and that warn them the invitation is coming.

garrett_william
Community Participant

The suggestion would also help out users who are using Trust Accounts connected to another instance of Canvas. We manually role because we know the Account ID of our users but do not know the SIS ID. 

kmallette
Community Participant

I really like the idea to fully add users, as the current convention is very misleading. Instructors are often very confused, since, when they click on the +People button it brings up a pop up window titled "Add People". However, instructors aren't actually adding people, they are inviting people.

macaulayl
Community Member

I would love a check box to auto-enroll without needing to accept an invitation.  Now, when I need to do this, I add the person, then go back to the person's account, masquerade as them, then accept the invitation, then stop masquerading...what a pain!

ted_sobrinho
Community Novice

It would be a great change. An example is in our institution, where there are many cases of students who, due to the possibility of refusal the invitation, understand that the acceptance is optional, when it isn't. This often generates inconvenience and dissatisfaction.

ckemp2
Community Member

This option makes perfect sense for a K-12 environment where the teachers create their own courses (hence SIS Import is not always suitable) and student acceptance is not optional.

joni
Community Explorer

In a K-12 setting, I feel that it doesn't make much sense to require student users to accept a course invitation, since their class schedule is already decided upon enrollment. 

By having those students automatically "accept" the course invite upon being added, this allows teachers to edit grades for those students even if the student missed the course invite. 

 

Edit: Since my post was merged with this one, I'd like to add that "force enrolling" a user should be the default for k12 environments. As an admin I am aware that SIS imports go around this issue, but myself and other admins on my team often use the manual/UI enrollment methods for situations where a single student is to be enrolled, it's just easier than loading up a .csv file. 

I don't think it's a major issue if a student is enrolled in the "wrong" class - as even in the current system it happens from time to time anyway. In my experience users either click Accept for every course, not realizing if its the wrong course, or ignore all the invite prompts anyway. I've never seen a situation in which the user noticed a course invite and hit decline because it was the wrong course. 

gillispiel1
Community Explorer

Agreed!  This is a needed feature/option in K12.

charlesm1
Community Member

Could admin be granted rights to auto enroll students in manually created courses like clubs? Students will hit deny, and we have to add them to the course again. Sometimes more than once.