Managing Rolling Enrolments

[rthornton]

Now that you've set up your instance with Sub-accounts and Courses, how can you manage your enrolments? In Vocational Education, many organisations work with rolling enrolments, where students start their unit and qualification work across the year. If you're one of those organisations, we've outlined two options below to manage rolling enrolments.

As always, have a chat with your Customer Success Manager(CSM) to discuss whether these options could work for your organisation.

In Canvas, enrolments can be managed at different levels using Term dates, Course dates and Section dates. In the examples below, we'll be using Section dates to manage rolling enrolments by organising them into monthly intake cohorts. 

If you don't know about Sections, read about them here. You'll be able to set Section-specific Assignments, Quizzes, Discussions (Graded/ Ungraded) and Announcements. You can also set Section-specific assessment due dates, and also filter and sort by Section in the New Gradebook, SpeedGrader and New Analytics. 

We’ve detailed two ways to manage your rolling enrolments using Sections. The first option utilises .CSV files to create Sections in bulk. The second option utilises the user interface to create Sections; this second option is a slower process, but still functional for smaller numbers of Sections.

Option One - CSV for Bulk Section Creation

Step 1: Design the Sections.CSV (Choosing the Headers)

Compulsory Headers

These are the headings that are compulsory and must be pre-filled prior to uploading the Sections.CSV as a SIS Import. 

• section_id:  This is a unique identifier used to create Sections within a Course. This identifier must not change for the Section, and must be globally unique. In the user interface, this is called the SIS ID.
• course_id:  This is the unique identifier of the course where the Section will be added or deleted (added in Courses.csv).
• name:  This is the name of the Section. Sections are ordered alphabetically by name.
• status:  This is how you can create or remove a Section within a Course. Mark as ‘active’ to create a Section or ‘deleted’ to remove an existing Section.

Optional Headers

• start_date:  This is the date the section begins. The format should be in ISO 8601: YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SSZ (The T may be replaced with a space).
• end_date:  This is the date the section ends. The format should be in ISO 8601: YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SSZ (The T may be replaced with a space). By default, user access is cut off at midnight on your indicated end date, meaning the previous day is the last full day that users have access to the section. Best practice is to set your end date to the day after the section ends.

Sample

section_id	course_id	name	status	start_date	end_date
Section_SIS_ID	Course_SIS_ID	UI_Name_for Section	active	YYYY-MM-DD	YYYY-MM-DD

You can also view an example of a Sections.CSV from your Provisioning Report.

Recommendation: If you are using Sections to manage your Start/ End Dates for your students enrolment, we recommend that you just use YYYY-MM-DD and that you don’t include the times. By default if selects Midnight, but if you decide to use custom time you need to ensure you utilise the correct format which includes the timezones. 

Step 2: Fill in Columns

1. Add a Section SIS ID:
   • Define a SIS ID Protocol/ Naming Convention
   • A Section_ID must be unique and different to every other Section_ID. If you have a Student Information System (SIS/SMS), use the unique Course Occurence Number as the Section_ID as you will never duplicate the use of that number. 
2. Fill in all remaining compulsory columns.

Sample

section_id	course_id	name	status	start_date	end_date
Section_SIS_ID	Course_SIS_ID	UI_Name_for Section	active	YYYY-MM-DD	YYYY-MM-DD
CSE000098	BSB51915_V118	July Intake BSB51915	active	2018-01-01	2018-12-31

Step 3: Export to .CSV

• How to Export to a .CSV from Google Sheets
• How to Export to a .CSV from Excel Spreadsheets

Recommendation: Use Google Sheets if possible. This is because Microsoft Excel is known to add random spaces/ characters that cause problems with the upload. If you used Microsoft Excel to export the .CSV and it comes up with an error message, try Google Sheets before reaching out to Canvas Support.  

Step 4: SIS Import (How to/ What not to)

1. Upload the .CSV to Canvas via the SIS Import Function
2. DO NOT click the toggles for the Batch/ UI options unless you have discussed these options with your CSM
3. Click ‘Process Data’

Recommendation: Always run a test in your TEST Environment to ensure you are happy with the effects caused by the SIS Import. 

Option Two - User Interface

Step 1: Create a Course for an occurrence

Read about some options here about what you should set as a Course.

Step 2: Create a Section for every monthly cohort 

1. Access Sections in the Course Settings. 
2. Add a Section for Each Month - this can help you to break your rolling enrolments into starting months. This means that students who enrol at the beginning of the month and students who enrol at the end of the month will be included in the same Section intake.  

Step 3: Edit the Section Details (SIS ID and Start/ End Dates)

1. Click the Name of the Section and ‘Edit Section’ on the right-hand side to start editing the details for the Course Section.
2. Add a Section SIS ID:

• Define a SIS ID Protocol/ Naming Convention
• A Section_ID must be unique and different to every other Section_ID. If you have a Student Information System (SIS/SMS), use the unique Course Occurence Number as the Section_ID as you will never duplicate the use of that number. 
1. Set a Start Date - Use the first of the month as the Start Date
2. Set an End Date -  Choose a date that corresponds to the length of time the students should be enrolled in the Course. For example, if the student has 1 year to complete the Course, the Start Date is Apr 1, 2018 and the End Date is Apr 1, 2019
3. Tick ‘Users can only Participate in the Course Between these Dates’ - read more about why you might ‘Limit Section Privileges’ here:
   • Interacting with Others,
   • Quizzes, Assignments, Discussions and Announcements can be Section-Specific.
4. Click ‘Update Section’ to save your changes.

Candice Lim.