Parent Accounts - What can we expect?

[kristin_bayless]

We're a mid-size school district with around 14,000 students on Canvas.  Our district has been using Canvas for several years, but until now we have not offered Canvas parent accounts. We're expecting quite a bit of interest when this is announced since parents have been asking for this access. This brings up the question of support.  

We'd appreciate feedback from districts who also implemented Canvas Parent after initial implementation.

1. What was your plan for parent support?  Did parents contact the schools, a centralized Help Desk, Canvas Support?

2. What was the volume of calls to begin and how long did the initial rush last?

3. What types of questions did you receive?  What support did the parents require?

4. Any unexpected challenges?

Thank you for your assistance!

Update 5/4/18

I thought I'd post an update on a few things that might contribute to the knowledge base on parent accounts.

1. After we rolled out, we had difficulties with our parents getting error messages when they attempted to create their accounts in the browser.  This was odd, because we'd thoroughly tested prior.  It turns out there was a conflict between the parent setup our staff/student LDAP authentication, even though the parent requests were never hitting our system.  That was fixed by Instructure, but it slowed down the roll-out because the build up for parents was met with errors and then a hold while we figured out what the issue was.  Perhaps it would have been best to start with a single school for marketing purposes, even though parent gets turned on for everyone at once.  Hindsight is 20/20!

2.  @peytoncraighill  posted his parent update. Canvas Parent 2.0! We're really happy to see this.  We'd decided to only release the browser version this spring, but the new release will make it possible to turn the app on as well.

[lauren_fox · Accepted solution]

We too just added parent access. We implemented district-wide 85,000 students in August and got so many requests for parent access, by parents, that we decided to open it up. We created support documents for teachers to prepare their course with homepages that explained their usage of Canvas. We also created a public Parent Tour that explains what, how and why of Canvas Observer role. 

Currently, parents are calling our district support line with Canvas concerns and most have to do with login information.

We are planning to expand support if we see increased call volume but right now it is manageable with 1 parent help desk personnel who also supports other parent systems. We are meeting with coaches and parent support specialists to help build awareness of tool, pedagogy and support resources. 

A challenge: 

Parents can access some features, such as LTIs if they are available in the course navigation. For example, parents can authenticate their personal Google Drive as they are viewing their child's course. We aren't really certain why a parent would need to do this? Because the LTI is attached to course and not user, we do not have a way of disabling this other than advising teachers to hide LTI from navigation, which also hides it from students. For other LTIs, sometimes a parent account is created(licensing and $) or the parent gets an error message (communication challenge). Hoping Canvas will realize parent observer role should have a different level of visibility to LTIs. 

[kristin_bayless]

Thanks Lauren, this is great information.  I'd not considered the LTI implications.  We have a limited number of LTI subscriptions, so I'll check with them about how they handle the observer role.  We'll need to test the Google and O365 LTI access.  It's also of interest to hear that you're getting calls from parents with login issues.  I suspected this might result in support calls and your post confirms it.  I found your parent tour on the website and am looking forward to checking it out. 

[kristin_bayless]

Lauren, I'd like to give this another week to see if we get any additional feedback.  At that time, I'll mark this question as answered.  I took a look at the AISD Blend course.  Wow - kuddos to your team!

[lauren_fox]

Thanks! Yes, I too would love to hear from others. We have only been live with Parent Observer access for about three weeks... lots to learn. 

[Bobby2]

Hi  @lauren_fox your experience with this is so valuable for all of us. Thanks for sharing. 

I'm interested in the Parent Tour you created. What format was it in? 

And thanks  @kristin_bayless for initiating this discussion.I'm keen to see how your district progresses with this also.

[lauren_fox]

The Parent Tour is a public course that followed a modular format. I module is in English and the second module is being translated into Spanish. Here's the like if you's like to take a look. bit.ly/BLENDparentTOUR

[joseph_allen]

Hi Kristie - I think the parent tour resource that Lauren demonstrated is very critical.  Something that is self-service and available any time. We have a similar course and also made a YouTube at the start of the school year explaining our resources.   I think you can expect mostly calls about logins.  No matter how you provision, some will still call.  We re-direct back to the schools as much as possible as we are not centrally staffed to support parents.  We help the schools with questions they can't answer.  Don't underestimate social media.  When some parents are displeased about something, they will take to Facebook or Twitter and you can have a situation get out of hand before you even knew there was one, so try to monitor those channels as best as you can. 

[Bobby2]

Very helpful points thanks  @joseph_allen Thanks for the resource share also. We are going through the process of how/when to introduce the app. So all of these tips are gold.

[kristin_bayless]

 @joseph_allen ‌

Thanks for your feedback.  This is really helpful. Two points in particular - the one about social media and the one about staffing for parent support were helpful.  I'm looking forward to checking out your resources.

After looking into this further, I've made the recommendation that we turn on the apps or the browser, but not both.  Each has positives and negatives, but they're handled so differently internally, I don't even want to go there with trying to support both.

[stacy_lambert]

HI  @lauren_fox ‌ 

We have a 'how to' video for parents to log into Sentral (student admin management system) and Canvas for CCWC Parents, however, I love the tour idea. Takes it to the next level. Great idea for us as we are starting a new year tomorrow!  @david_summervi1 ‌

Thanks!

[ysmalls]

Hi  @kristin_bayless ‌,

My district has over 61,000 students, at first we only loaded observers when requested by the Principal of the school.  This year we finally loaded all observes and left it up to each school to let their parents know how to log in.

We created a parent handout that we provided to admin as each campus, some decided to add their own info to the document which is totally fine.  Some campuses requested that we present to parents during parent/teacher conference night and some asked us to present to PTA.  All worked out nicely.  I'm working on an "Parent Intro to Canvas" course which I hope to finish sometime.

1,  The handout for parents is added to the "Help" option so that parents can access even if they are not able to log in.  Parent's can contact the campus for help or submit a ticket through Canvas.

2.  We had several calls but parents were submitting tickets through Canvas, at first we had pages and pages of support tickets but we make sure to answer tickets submitted each day.

3.  Here are some common questions:

Can't log in - almost always they are doing something wrong.

Forgot password - we never give them password but refer them back to the campus, they can give them passwords.

How do you log in - we refer them back to the parent handout available through "Help".

Can't see the calendar - they don't have it selected.

Can't see all courses - Either teacher has not published and/or they need to mark as favorite.

Can't see anything on the calendars - let them know teachers have not added content.

Missing courses for a child - this is from our SIS where we need to link students, we fix and reply.

4.  I would like to say no?  It was challenging to keep up with the tickets submitted by parents but we survived.

Also,  I would suggest you use the observer file to load your parents which has made things easier.  If a child is added to a course then the observer will get added automatically.

Good luck.

[kristin_bayless]

ysmalls‌

Thank you for your response to my inquiry and your questions!    It was esp. helpful to hear of the specific questions that came in and your responses to these. 

In using an observer file to load the parents, 1) are you including the parent email from your SIS, and do you find it to be up to date? and 2) Are you using a username/password from your SIS or do you have a standard format?  If a standard format, no need to advertise it, but if you can give some idea of how you selected it would be very helpful. and 3) If you set up the accounts for the parents, are they able to reset their passwords (the documentation suggests no)?  So do you get a lot of parents calling with forgotten passwords and are you allowing school personnel access to users at the root level to be able to change these?  Sorry if this last shows my ignorance of how passwords work.  All our users so far use our district LDAP authentication.

Thanks!

[ysmalls]

 @kristin_bayless ‌,

I hope these answers help you:

1. The email we use is from our SIS but it's an email that the parent used to create their parent access account.  They are told that those same credentials will be used to create their Canvas account.

2. The password we use is the same that they selected when they created their parent access account.

3.  Parent's cannot reset their own passwords for Canvas.

Here is the a quick rundown.  Parent must first create a parent access account, credentials used to create that account are loaded to our SIS then that data is used to create their Canvas account.  So Canvas is always 1 day behind.  If a parent changes their parent access account password then they would need to wait till the next day to use the new password.  Parents can contact the campus to access their credentials they don't need access in Canvas since the data being used in Canvas is the same as what is in our SIS.  Not really a lot of questions regarding forgotten passwords but when we do get that question we remind them that it's the same as their parent access account.  Sometimes we get a response back that they completely have forgotten that passwords too so they have two options 1.  Contact the school to give you the password or 2.  Reset your parent access account password and that will update to Canvas and we let them know that it takes 24hrs for the whole process.

This whole process also keeps parents from having yet another set of credentials to login to another program.

Let me know if you have any other questions. 

[kristin_bayless]

ysmalls‌  @lauren_fox  @joseph_allen  @lauren_fox 

I can't tell you how helpful your posts have been in making our decisions on rolling out Canvas Parent.  I will go ahead and mark this question answered.  All of your replies have added to our depth of understanding on this process. Love this community!