Masquerade as Students in Canvas Catalog

(1)

We would like the ability to masquerade or act as students in Canvas Catalog for the following reasons:

 

1. To diagnose issues with logging in and accessing their In Progress or Completed courses

2. To be able to view student's transcript for customization purposes (if necessary)

3. To determine if students have received a certificate of completion 

4. To be able to drop student's from courses upon a student's behalf

 

The reason why these items are important is that we have received emails stating that a handful of students need assistance accessing their courses, how to access their transcript and customize it for their employer, and a handful of students have not been receiving their certificate of completion in their email. In addition, we have had requests to drop students from courses due to different circumstances.

 

Here are some images of what students see:

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268860_pastedImage_2.png

 

🔎 This idea has been archived. While this idea isn't open for comments, it is an important part of Instructure’s idea conversations and development process. Contributions like this are valuable as Instructure prioritizes work on new or existing features.

21 Comments
curtain
Community Participant

I think many of us have become used to this as a very helpful tool in Canvas. Seeing that extended here would allow us all to support our Catalog users approaching the level we are able to with Canvas, and providing high levels of support is something us ed tech types like to do!

philippe_vanden
Community Novice

Was my first question when introduced to Canvas. As an ICT-instructor I think it is crucial to be able to visualise the student environment in a life demo to introduce students to the tool. As well to tackle some classic mistakes by the teacher and have a simple feedback.

jsowalsk
Community Champion

Thank you for your feedback and support.

jsowalsk
Community Champion

Totally agree. Thank you for your feedback.

isobel_williams
Community Contributor

Would also like to be able to submit assignments for students.  Sometimes this is needed.

jsowalsk
Community Champion

I would recommend creating this comment as another idea Smiley Happy 

penny_christens
Community Participant

A test instance of Catalog would also be helpful.

kathy_harris
Community Contributor

Would Beta work? There is a beta instance.

jsowalsk
Community Champion

Beta works to test items just not to masquerade as people though unfortunately.

kathy_harris
Community Contributor

Oh, yeah, I know it is just for testing items. I just thought Penny would like a space to test items, and I don't think everyone knows about the beta version. I apologize. I didn't mean for my comment to sound like a solution for masquerading as a student. :smileyconfused:

jsowalsk
Community Champion

No worries Smiley Happy

lwhitleyputz
Community Novice

Had issues twice this week where the ability to masquerade could have saved me over an hour of communication time and calls to Canvas. Once a student said the certificate of completion was not on their dashboard, once that they received the wrong certificate. Hard to diagnose if I can't view it from that student's perspective. 

jsowalsk
Community Champion

Thank you for your input  @lwhitleyputz ‌.

bernstlc
Community Novice

 @jsowalsk ‌ have you attempted this recently by any chance? I recall a little while back the "feature" disappeared for the lucky few of us who could already do this (by "Acting As" in Canvas, then navigating out to Catalog). Instructure said something to the effect of "we hope to reinstate it, but for everyone" (at least that was my interpretation). The feature has returned for me, so maybe they have made it work for all.

Fingers crossed.

jsowalsk
Community Champion

HI  @bernstlc ‌, I am still unable too. It could be the way our instance is set up. But, the purpose of this feature request/idea is to be able to masquerade from inside Catalog just itself as a registrant.

jsowalsk
Community Champion

There is a beta instance you just need to put in a request for it.

JustinBrooksby
Community Participant

This works for me. I log out of Catalog and then masquerade as the student in Canvas. Then I go back to catalog and click the log-in button. At that point I am logged in as the student in Catalog.  This is a nice way to make it work now but yes it would be easier if the masquerade button was right there in Catalog.

jsowalsk
Community Champion

Thanks, Justin. For some reason, it does not work for our instance.

jsowalsk
Community Champion

Hi everyone, I finally have the answer to this but it isn't a great one.

You need to be logged into Canvas, then go to the course want to act as a student in. Select the student you want to act as then select Proceed then go to your Catalog (make sure you are logged out) and select Log In to login as the student.

jsowalsk
Community Champion

Hi everyone,

We have been using the workaround that Instructure has provided but it has been a real pain since it takes extra steps. We would really appreciate it if there is this functionality in Catalog to save time for our admins.

Jessica