Programme name in course roster

Question

As an Instructor, when I visit the People page (Course Roster), I can see the list of people and can filter to see the list of students.

My course is offered to students enrolled in a broad range of programmes. Occasionally, I have to reach out to the Programme Leader to discuss a student. Unfortunately, the Course Roster does not show which programme the student belongs to, creating a bunch of logistical challenges.

Am I missing something? If so, I would appreciate guidance.

If it is currently not possible to view the students' programme in the Course Roster, then I have 3 alternative approaches as requests:

* Add a column/field "Programme" to the Course Roster so that the student's programme is visible right away.
* If #1 is not possible, how about adding the "Programme" field to the students' respective profile pages, so that at least the information is a single click away from the Course Roster?
* If #2 is not possible either, then on the students' respective profile pages, could you show ALL the student's Enrolments, and not just those for my modules? We do enroll our students in a Canvas course named after the programme so that they have programme-related information in a single place.

JeffCampbell · Accepted Answer

This seems more like the kind of information that would be very useful for your institution, but less practical on the site overall. This is essentially asking for a field to be added to the Canvas site that it specific to how your school operates. Do you get a roster from your institution outside of Canvas? Since this is not normally something tracked via Canvas, I would suspect that they have a system that tracks enrollment and a student's Programme. You might inquire if that system can generate a roster for you that includes the information you request.

Another thing you could consider doing is implementing a survey at the start of your course. It could be done on the first or second day of class. In that survey, you could not only build in a question asking for them to identify their Programme, but you could even put something in where they identify their Programme Leader. You could then easily look up a student's program as needed.

Chris · Accepted Answer

Hi @VPundir,

I agree with almost everything that @JeffCampbell said around this.  While the info might be important to you (or even your whole school), there is probably somewhere outside of Canvas that it's pretty easily available to you.  I'm sure making it available in Canvas would be easier for you, but there is a fine line that Instructure I'm sure considers with things like this.  If they put a "program" filed, what about one for grade, then someone might want student phone numbers, what about their address, their advisor's name, etc...  As you can see, it could quickly get out of hand.  As a Canvas admin, I really prefer we keep a distinct line between a learning management system (Canvas) and a student information system, where all of this info usually lives.

Now, with all of that said, you may be surprised to learn that my institution actually has something very similar to your request in place.  Rather than being on the people page, which would be basically all custom coding prone to all kinds of issues, we used the custom gradebook column API to create a column in the gradebook for each course which is populated with a student's major.  It's probably not the most elegant solution, but it gets the job done for people who need it (especially around accreditation here).  I thought I'd throw this out as a possibility.

-Chris