Additional Student Fields

[jjordan1]

Hello fellow K12s,

I was wondering if we have asked for additional data fields yet (aka: user defined fields) from Instructure?  As our high school campus transitions to full Canvas usage (this is our 1st year), we slowly depart from our old gradebook/attendance web application from our SIS.  We still need it to take attendance there, but the gradebook is only needed for end of quarter total grade (we use multiple grading periods) now.  That old trusty web application also gave our Teachers additional demographic data on our students and they have been asking for that.  I would love to have additional user defined fields that we control, to add to our import process.  Additionally, the appropriate permissions to control access to these user defined fields (using existing course/account roles).  Have we asked for this before?

[stephanie_pope]

That would be a huge undertaking- to have SIS features as well. We would never house our grades solely in Canvas because we'd need a system to generate a transcript. Traditionally, an LMS doesn't have the function. Sadly, we'd need too systems until all the needs of an SIS are met. Great question to bring up!

Stephanie

[jjordan1]

We share similar needs.  In our case we do not want to add full demographics, just looking for extra user defined fields to give our Teachers access to some common demographic info (like Parents contact info, phones, etc).  Our SIS will always be there for our end of term grades, report cards, gpa, transcripts, health, attendance and such.  That would be too much for Canvas to pull off (although I bet they could handle that, certainly they have the talent to build a SIS).  Thank you Stephanie for the feedback.  I hope we get some more.

[clong]

Hi Jason,

I've heard many top level Instructure employees and even their founders say that Canvas doesn't ever have plans to become a SIS or replace one but that doesn't mean they couldn't add a few more fields. One thing to note would be that Canvas doesn't differentiate user roles at the user account level. When you create a user it is just a user. If the user is enrolled in a course as a student, then they are a student for that course, but they could be a teacher in another. This gives Canvas lots of flexibility in terms of roles and permissions.

So if you'd like Canvas to add a few more user fields, the best thing to do would be to create a Canvas Feature Idea​ for this and try to rally the support of community for your idea. I think it would help your cause if you include examples of what kind of fields you'd like to have and how you and others at you school would benefit from having them and how you'd make use of them.

When you create your feature idea, please post a link to it back here so it is easier for us to find and we can get a update notification from this post.

[jjordan1]

Thanks Chris for the feedback.  I was hoping to see more from the community (if there had been any interest like this before) before going the feature request route.  I have a few other K12 features out there that have been voted on and know the value of that process.  If I do add the feature request, I will post it back here for sure.  I did not want to mark this as correct yet, as there is no correct answer only responses from the community if this had been requested before.  I would like to keep this open for a bit longer.

[clong]

Hi Jason, Thanks for providing the additional information. It sounds like you wanted to start a discussion rather than a post that needs a definitive answer. Even though this post has an answer marked, it is still open for all the community members to post to, but based on your desire to have more responses from the community of users, I'm going to change this post to a discussion, which will hopefully open the conversation up more and at the same time, remove the correct answer flag.

[jjordan1]

That is helpful.  A discussion is what I was seeking.  Thank you Chris.