Move users between accounts and courses

[daniel]

Hello there,

I have imported about 1000 users to the main account, however, once a sub-account or course is created, I'm unable to move them between Canvas, it shows as if there were no users whether it is a course or a sub-section, is that possible?

How can I start creating groups that work globally? or at least account-level?... Because it is a bit pointless if I can create groups but I can't use them in Courses or Sub-accounts...

Thank you,

Regards-

[seema cyriac]

Hello Daniel

 

    Users are global, the account or subaccount they belongs to is based on the courses they are enrolled into. We can specify the account name in course settings but not in user settings.

 

Thanks

Seema Cyriac

[danf...@gmail.com]

Hello,

Thanks for your response. In this case, given that I can't 'move' users massively, may I ask, what hierarchy setting would you recommend me for a K12 with about 2500 students?

Account as school > sub-account as grades > courses as subjects (math, sciences, etc)

OR

Accounts as grades > sub-accounts as subjects > courses as subjects for specific groups on these grades.

Thank you,

Regards.

[danf...@gmail.com]

Also, may I ask what's the point of account-level User Groups if they are useless? you can't do anything with them.

Thank you,

Regards.

[Graham Ballantyne]

I guess that depends on your definition of "useless". We're planning on using them for non-course collaboration (e.g. student clubs, faculty committees, research groups, etc). These types of groups aren't scoped to a course, and don't need course-specific features like gradebooks, assignments, etc.

There are some limitations in the current implementation of account-level groups that we're attempting to work around with a custom plugin.

-- 

Graham Ballantyne

IT Services

Simon Fraser University

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[danf...@gmail.com]

Hello,

Certainly, that depends, it's 'useless' for my purpose of assigning a group of users to certain courses easily.

I suppose I'll have to do this manual work

[danf...@gmail.com]

I might need your advise, what would you suggest me, grades as parent categories and courses as child categories or the other way around? given the amount of students I'm not sure what would be neater, 

[Carrie Saarinen]

Hi Daniel,

Regarding "groups" of Students:
If you wish to create "groups" of students and enroll them by "group", the Canvas feature to use is Sections.
Create a Section, add Students to the Section, then enroll the Section into a Course (or multiple Courses).

Read: Canvas User Admin Guide: Courses and Sections
See: SIS documentation on Sections. When using Sections, the Enrollments .csv should place the student into a Section (section_id) rather than a Course (course_id).

Regarding Canvas Accounts and Subaccounts:
If User Accounts are based at the Root Account, they do not need to be re-added to Subaccounts. They don't need to be "moved" from account to account as they progress from year to year if you use grade levels as your Account/Subaccount structure. Any User at the Root Account can be added to any Course in any Subaccount.

Subaccounts are great for keeping Courses organized and for managing Roles and Permissions associated with those courses.
And Users are most easily managed at the Root Account where they can be enrolled in any Course in any Subaccount. Managing Users at the Root Account means there is no need to move Users from one "grade level" subaccount to the next as they progress in school.

Remember: Users only have access to Courses in which they are enrolled. There is no need to "hide" regular Users from content or restrict regular Users to Subaccounts. The exception is Admin users who have access to all Courses in the Subaccount in which they are an Admin.

Read: What are the differences between course-level roles and account-level roles?

Hope that helps!
Carrie
Canvas Network
canvas.net

[danf...@gmail.com]

Thank you!,

I was able to enroll the same group on several courses!, I suppose you were talking about cross-listed sections, right? That's what I used.

I have one concern regarding the progress of students, is this an automatic process once the Terms are configured? I've set up the school as you mentioned (imported over 1000 students, 150 teachers, 60 courses and 12 grades, all them related to each other and no manual work! the csv sis importation worked just fine!), Subaccount as grades, Courses as subjects (math, physics, philosophy, etc), and sections as 'group' of students in order to enroll them more easily to each course (as they see several subjects at the same time). But what happens when the year/term finalizes and they progress to the next levels? is this a manual work? what should happen?

Thanks for your response Carrie, Canvas is an awesome product, however since it supports so many different types of structures (certainly as a canvas) I'm still trying to figure out the best configuration for the institution, now I'm more familiar with the product,

Regards.

[Carrie Saarinen]

Hi Daniel!

Good! I'm glad that was helpful. Cross-listing Sections is great for dropping different "groups" (Sections) of students into the same Course shell. Some shools set up a new Course for each Section, but as Section features improve (like differentiated due dates on Assignments), the need to do that is lessening.

Good question about Terms in Canvas!

Terms specify when a Course opens and closes and when Users have access to the courses. It makes it easy to "open" or launch courses in chunks (like semesters or quarters or trimesters). Terms allow you to manage course start dates and user access dates without having to configure it for each individual course (Course Settings).

Terms are independent of Accounts/Subaccounts, and Terms are independent of Courses and Users. In other words, you can use Accounts, Users, Courses, and Sections without ever using Terms. But Terms are very powerful for the administrator and super helpful to pulling data out our Canvas later.

Terms don't matter much to the end users - its really more of an administrative feature. You'll notice in Canvas, in the Admin area, you can "filter" courses by Term (see top of the right side bar in your Admin dashboard). This helps you find a course quickly if you need to jump into it. Also, when you pull Reports, you can filter by Term, which is great when generating data from one semester/quarter/trimester/AY and comparing to another.

See document attached. It's a sketch I made a few years ago when explaining Terms and Accounts to some new users.

In the example document, you'll see the account structure on the far right with a list of courses associated with those accounts in the middle. Then on the far left, some Terms and how they relate to Courses. Notice how the "Math" Subaccount has repeat versions of the same Math courses. Those Math courses are assigned different Terms. Math 101 ran in both the Spring Term and the Fall Term.

Terms in use:
- A Course (Math 101) would be created and it would live in its associated Subaccount (Math Dept) or Sub-Subaccount (Math Dept > 9th Grade).
- A Term would be created for the semester/quarter/trimester/AY (Fall 2015). [tip: leave the default User Access dates for now; while you learn about Terms; you may never have a need to customize User Access dates, but its an option is you find you need it.]
- The first session of  Math 101 would be assigned a Term (Fall 2015). Students (individually or in Sections) would be enrolled into the Course.
- As long as the Course is published before the Start Date specific in the Term, Students will have access to it beginning on that date.
-The next time Math 101 needs to run, you would create a new Term (Spring 2016) and make a copy of the Math 101 course, and apply the new Term (Spring 2016).
- Then, the following year, create a new Term (Fall 2016); copy the Math 101 Course; and apply the new Term to the Course. (yes! you can all this via API, CSV imports!)

In the end, you would have three Math 101 courses in the Math Dept Subaccount. Each version of Math 101 would still have the Students and Teachers who were enrolled and all the archived data from the course would remain intact. You could generate reports (Grades, Outcomes, Page View data, etc) from all of the sessions and compare the data. You would have a record of when each student took Math 101.

Finally, (and this is where become a hero for your teachers) Terms helps Teachers navigate, find and manage prior versions of their courses. Many teachers like to have access to prior sessions of their courses - using Terms makes it each for them to find a past course! See screenshot.

.

Good conversation! I love Accounts/Terms/Courses/Sections in Canvas. There are some great benefit to using these features and the more you learn about them, the more possibilities exist. But starting with a good organization plan in the beginning is essential.

Carrie