Is there any way to add an instructor in a course to a Differentiation Tag or Group (for use in "View as Student" mode)

Question

I'm an admin in our university's Canvas environment and this question has been posed by a couple of our instructors. They're using Differentiation Tags and/or Groups in various courses and need to verify functionality for students via the "View as Student" feature. However, the way this feature works, there isn't an actual "student user" created for the instructor in the course.

We are in the process of transitioning from Blackboard Learn, where a "_previewStudent" user is created when the instructor goes to "Student Preview" mode. When leaving that mode, the instructor can choose to "keep" the preview student and add then add it to a Group to see content that is restricted or assigned to that group.

Because there is no persistent "student preview" user in Canvas and also because the controls to add to Tags or Groups are only present for Students, there is no way for an instructor to actually view the course as a student in a Tag or Group.

I understand that Differentiation Tags are relatively new, so perhaps this capability is already on a design roadmap. If it's not, is there an official way to submit it as an enhancement request?

ChadVKealey · Answer

The problem is really timing. Our (home-brew) integration system sends data from the SIS to Canvas at the top of each hour. The way it handles student drops is to block/disable access for any student in the LMS that isn't in the course roster from the SIS. So, any account manually added as a student (which are the only people that can be added to groups or tags) needs to be removed before the next integration cycle.

In Blackboard, we got around this by exempting that "_StudentPreview" account from the integration process. Because Canvas' "View as Student" feature doesn't create a persistent account, there's no account to exempt and also no account to add to group or tag. It seems like the simplest option would be to allow other roles to be added to groups or tags.

I'd love to put in a feature request for this, but apparently I haven't gained enough cred in the community to have that access (which is kind of annoying in itself). So, if anyone else reading this has that access and wants to put in the request, I'll gladly let them take the credit for thinking of it.

Hildi_Pardo · Answer

Do you have any Teaching Assistants or just another teaching colleague you could temporarily add as a teacher just to test this out?  And then remove them?  Might be a temporary solution.   But I think submitting this as a feature request would be great!!

Todd_E · Answer

We strictly limit access to those accounts to our small team.

Due to the number of courses and roles we use to test with them, it's not feasible to share them out to anyone else.

Faculty can make their own test account since we allow non-edu accounts access, they just have to set it up which is a bother. Having something built in would be much nicer.