LTI picks up role in course, not role in Canvas

[nwilson7]

Hello Community!

Not sure this is really an issue or question but thought I would share something I discovered today because it threw me at first.  As a Canvas admin, I sometimes add myself to courses for ease of access.  I recently added myself as a student to a course just to show someone how to self-enroll in the course.  I am guessing it is rare that admins are students in courses but maybe it happens.  For New Quizzes, it seems to pull your role in the course and not your role in Canvas.  I was trying to get to the moderate area of the New Quiz in the course I was a student in and once you click "build" (when it essentially is launching the LTI) it put me in Student mode and I could not get to any of the actual build areas until I removed myself from the course.  At first I had forgotten I enrolled as a student in the course and could not figure out why I could not get to anything.

I checked with support and they believed that this was normal "bleed through of roles" but thought I would post here in case it happens to anyone else.

Have a great day!

-Nick

[rhughes2]

I feel this is bug in the way that New Quizzes handles roles. 

There are many instances where users might hold multiple roles. Particularly both Admin and Student. eg. I am a student in our Library course but also an overarching account admin of Canvas. When I try to assist library staff with the creation of a New Quiz I am unable to build the quiz unless I remove myself from my student role within that course. 

Within other areas of Canvas, classic quizzes, assignments, editing pages, etc, I can be a teacher, student and account admin within one course and it seems the highest role level is applied (or a combination of roles are applied eg. I can be a student and teacher within a course, allowing me to edit as well as submit an assignment). 

With API calls when determining the user_role and associated access the 'highest' role takes precedence. 

Rachel 

[ProfessorBeyrer]

Thanks for sharing your experience, @nwilson7. I wonder if you are able to use a dummy student user account for the purposes you describe. I'm a sub-account admin and an instructor, and I have separate user accounts for both roles. (Our IT staff also created a dummy student account for all instructors.) I especially like using my instructor account when I'm demonstrating how to do stuff for other instructors, as I'm wary of getting questions about the various links, &c. that I can access through my admin role. Using my dummy student user has helped me catch things here and there where actual students could not see or do something but instructors can.

[reynlds]

"Collisions" between course and account roles are not well documented (if at all) and Instructure has told me on multiple occasions that the outcome is unpredictable. In my decades of experience with permissions in directory services, etc., I've found that the "most restrictive wins".