Login to Canvas through Browser using QR Code

(2)

It would be handy to have the ability to login to Canvas through the browser using QR Codes. This would come in very handy for young students. 

10 Comments
bogardde
Community Participant

Schoology, one of the strongest Canvas competitors for the K-12 LMS market, rolled out this feature last year.

Adopting more secure passwords (which is obviously a good thing) unfortunately come with greater login challenges for certain Canvas users. A strong password can take a young student or a student with special accessibility needs several minutes to log in successfully.

QR badge logins provide a painless login experience for them. We know this because our District uses Clever, a Single-Sign-On service, to provide quick access to most of our ed tech tools. Clever offers a QR code login option. We've turned on this option for K-2 and other special situations, and it works wonderfully.  

BUT we can't add Canvas to our Clever service because we use PowerSchool SIS for Canvas enrollments and grade syncing, and Instructure engineers tell us it's not possible to use PowerSchool and Clever simultaneously in Canvas.

Our K-2 staff are rapidly abandoning the use of Canvas because of the login difficulties - so we need the QR code login option NOW!

ADDITIONAL FEATURE IDEA RECOMMENDATION: This should be a toggle-slider option at the sub-account level so learning institutions could choose whether or not they wanted this feature across the board, just for certain sub-accounts, or not at all.

MattHanes
Community Champion

We discussed this option with our CSM as well ( @kshaheen ‌). It would be a tremendous help to be able to use Clever for Authentication while still using our SIS or CSV rostering. For instance, we use Clever for authentication into G Suite but do not use it create our account structures or groups. We still use Active Directory for that.

bogardde
Community Participant

Yes, we have the exact same set-up.

corey_mcneill
Community Explorer

Our State (NC) SSO just rolled out the ability for our younger students to access the SSO using a QR Code. However when we launched the Canvas App we were sadly disappointed to see that we could not use a QR Code to get into Canvas. We would LOVE to have this as a feature in the Canvas App!!

Kelvin_Dean
Community Contributor

See my blog post (Canvas Mobile Update - Spring 2020 Preview > New Features > QR for Mobile Login) for more info on QR codes.

QR for Mobile Login

bogardde
Community Participant

It is nice seeing a QR code being rolled out for mobile Canvas. However, I would argue that this idea is not completed, and the idea stage at the top of this page should reflect that.

For this to be a completed idea, the QR code option needs to be extended to desktop (browser-based) access to Canvas. Many school districts in the US have settled on using Chromebooks in the classroom, so the mobile QR rollout is not solving our main problem of young students having to type in secure passwords with upper and lower case letters and special characters. We really need QR code login for ALL devices.

Stef_retired
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni

You're correct, bogardde‌. We're going to leave this idea open for voting, and when the feature for the mobile app is officially released, we'll post an update here but will not mark it as "completed."

Stef_retired
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni

Effective with the March 28, 2020 ready release, students can use a QR code to log into the Canvas Student app. For more information, please read through the https://community.canvaslms.com/docs/DOC-18596-ready-release-notes-2020-03-28 

hmacdermott
Community Participant
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.

ProductPanda
Instructure
Instructure
Status changed to: Archived
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.