Can the Test Student / TA / Instructor be placed in a group?

[Leslee]

Hello Hivemind!

I'm trying to come up with creative ways for an instructor to join a group for the purpose of Group Collaborations/Assignments. I have limited admin capabilities, but most instructors don't have any admin privileges. 

I'm teaching an "Advanced Teaching with Canvas" class on my campus. As a part of this, I'm having participants experience Groups and Collaborations from both the instructor and student perspective. Here's what they do:

1. Create group sets and groups
2. Create a Collaboration
3. Participate in a Collaboration
4. Grade a Group assignment

It's the last one that has me stymied.

Last session, I experimented with them being students in each others' sandboxes. This was great for those who were active in the class; the flakes made it really difficult. As I tweak the class, I'd like to come up with a way for them to see what grading groups looks like without everyone being held hostage by those flakes. I CAN do this: change my role to student and use my admin superpowers to join a group then submit a group assignment, which they then grade.

No problem for me, really. However, if I let someone else teach this class, they won't have my admin superpowers to change their role to "student". Is there a way for mere mortal instructors to join an instructor-student's Sandbox as a student and thus be placed in a group? 

TIA!

Leslee

[passerinij]

Hello! I have the dilemma of which you speak -- minus your admin superpowers 😉 -- and I don't know how to resolve the issue. Just wondering if anyone has responded to your query.

I'm so frustrated that I cannot actually see what my students are seeing -- in a group discussion, for example. The "Test Student" feature is great for some tasks, but its limitations are --  -- -- ... and as an English teacher, this is the part where words fail me, so... envision me waving my hands madly and grimacing and saying, "Aaaaaaargh!"

I just don't understand how there could not be a workaround for this. I guess I will email our Canvas IT folks and ask for a "dummy" student account of some kind... but I'm guessing that if that were an easy thing to do, without problematic repercussions, in terms of [I dunno... student numbers... data collection... something like that?], then all faculty would be given such an account to begin with. Or Canvas would make the Test Student feature more like what I'm asking for, in the first place.

Have you found a brilliant solution? If so, please share! --JoLee