Preferred Name

Colleagues,

We are considering enabling the "Preferred Name" option. I have some questions about that feature that I can't seem to locate....

1) Is this feature a global student setting or is it course-by-course? I think it's global, but I can't tell.

2) We are not feeding this from Banner so I assume the SIS will not overwrite this update and revert to the non-preferred name (?)

3) Is the setting sticky beyond a term or does it need to be updated each semester? Or how often? If a student drops/adds a course will the setting be sticky?

I probably have some more questions....

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Accepted answers

dbrace

Hi @RobertGibson,

I agree with pretty much everything said by @chriscas and @paul_fynn.

By not using Banner as a "source of truth", you could be opening up the various technical aspects (both within Canvas and in other systems) of your institution to a lot of confusion.

Related to what both of them said, students are less likely to provide an inappropriate name if they have to first enter it into another system before it is used in the Canvas LMS.

I would recommend using a process (it is what my institution does and has done since August 2015, when we were using a different LMS) that is similar to what @chriscas described:

make use of Preferred First Name in Banner
how ever you have it currently setup, setup your "connection" between Banner and Canvas so that Preferred First Name is used initially as a first name
if Preferred First Name is empty/null, use Legal First Name

Using Preferred First Name in Banner will also make it (as long as it is supported by them) possible to use in other systems as well.

-Doug

All comments

Chris

Hi @RobertGibson,

Could you possibly give a bit more detail on what you're considering? I ask because "preferred name" is not really a Canvas term, but is definitely a term used in the Banner student information system.

If you're planning to enable preferred name in Banner, it would really depend on your connection between Canvas and Banner as to what would happen. We are a Banner school with a custom script which sends data from Banner to Canvas. When we implemented preferred name in Banner a few years ago, we changed our script to send a user's preferred name (if it exists, otherwise use the legal name) to all Canvas name fields. This guarantees anyone who sets a preferred name in Banner will see it in Canvas.

The closest Canvas equivalent to the Banner preferred name (that I know of), is what Canvas calls the "display name". Unfortunately, for students to edit the display name directly in Canvas, I believe you also have to give them the ability to change their regular/legal name as well. How making a change in Canvas itself would interact with your Banner integration again depends on how things are coded. Often SIS integrations will overwrite UI changes, but doing so is an option. If you choose to not have Banner overwrite UI-changed fields, you can eventually get in situations where name info is very out of sync and may be had for teachers and admins to distinguish. The preferred name in Canvas is displayed in many places vs the regular/legal name, but not everywhere, so going this direction also means a student's regular/legal name may be displayed in areas they don't want it to be.

Talking from experience, I feel like having Banner be the source of truth for legal and preferred name info is better than allowing changes in Canvas. Doing things in Banner allows other systems to receive the name changes, and makes them slightly more official. This does assume that your connection from Banner to Canvas is something your team can modify when needed.

I hope some of this info helps and aligns with what you were asking, but please do update us with your plans, thoughts, and questions!

-Chris

paul_fynn

Hi @RobertGibson , just to weigh in on a slightly different tack to @chriscas

gender identity has become increasingly important and politicised over recent years, with increasing obligations on organisations, and birth name vs legal name vs preferred name have implications and obligations according to your jurisdiction
for Higher Education providers this is an important equality issue, and entry into HE (often co-inciding with 'legal age of maturity' and a move from parental home) is often the chosen point for transition of gender identity, or simply name
if this is addressed in Canvas rather than in Banner (or other SIS) there is a risk that the student's former name becomes visible to staff and peers at first entry to the institution before the student has had a chance to express and affirm how they wish to be addressed

I would suggest

1) If this isn't already known to be important to students in your institution it will inevitably be at some point

2) It's important that the institution has clear policies addressing and implementing preferences, according to jurisdictional requirements, and to capture and deploy those preferences at the earliest possible point in the student's journey, and ensure that all applicants and current students know how that works

3) In my personal opinion this is a question to be primarily resolved within your SIS configuration, and then passed to Canvas in real time

Advanced apology for anyone who finds an issue with my terminology - this is a sphere where we are all on the learning curve.

dbrace

Hi @RobertGibson,

I agree with pretty much everything said by @chriscas and @paul_fynn.

By not using Banner as a "source of truth", you could be opening up the various technical aspects (both within Canvas and in other systems) of your institution to a lot of confusion.

Related to what both of them said, students are less likely to provide an inappropriate name if they have to first enter it into another system before it is used in the Canvas LMS.

I would recommend using a process (it is what my institution does and has done since August 2015, when we were using a different LMS) that is similar to what @chriscas described:

make use of Preferred First Name in Banner
how ever you have it currently setup, setup your "connection" between Banner and Canvas so that Preferred First Name is used initially as a first name
if Preferred First Name is empty/null, use Legal First Name

Using Preferred First Name in Banner will also make it (as long as it is supported by them) possible to use in other systems as well.

-Doug

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