Canvas - Adding/Removing People from Course Sites (for Instructors)


Introduction

Canvas is Virginia Tech's learning management system (LMS). Instructors use Canvas to manage teaching materials like assignments, quizzes, feedback, and student grades. 

  • Official courses are automatically created in instructors' Canvas accounts.
  • Enrolled students are automatically added.
  • Instructors can reuse teaching materials by importing them to a new course site.
  • Canvas provides 24-7 support by phone (833-639-7621) and chat (click Help on any Canvas screen).

The Canvas Instructor Guide and the Canvas Student Guide have full instructions on using Canvas. These instructions are specific to Virginia Tech. To see other Canvas topics, please see:

Contents

Instructions

Background

Active Virginia Tech affiliates - enrolled students and current university employees - automatically have Canvas accounts. If you are a teacher in a Canvas site, you can add VT affiliates to your site in any role. In official course sites though, do not add your students because they are added and dropped automatically based on Banner data. 

Not everyone with a Virginia Tech email address has access to Canvas.

  • Alums and former employees who left the university before Canvas was adopted in 2016 will not have a Canvas account and will need to use Canvas as a guest instead.
  • Visiting scholars and emeritus faculty do not automatically receive a Canvas account. If they need to use Canvas, you must request a Canvas account to be created for them.

Canvas is a learning management system intended for academic and professional development. It should not be used to host projects or student clubs - Google Apps and Microsoft Teams should be used instead if you are looking for a place to collaborate with people for projects or clubs. See Understanding Online Collaborative Spaces and Intranets for other platforms to use.

Roles / Permissions

What you can do in Canvas depends on your role. Canvas comes with these default roles (see Canvas Course Role Permissions):

  • Teacher
  • TA
  • Designer
  • Student
  • Observer

Virginia Tech added more roles to meet our community's needs (see Permissions for Canvas at Virginia Tech):

  • Grader
  • Librarian
  • Tech Support
  • Teaching Consultant
  • SSD Office

To change someone's role in your course, see How do I edit user roles in a course? 

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Adding People

Adding Virginia Tech Affiliates

Adding VT Affiliates to Canvas
  1. Go to the course site in Canvas.
  2. Click People on the course navigation menu.
  3. Click +People.
  4. Under Add user(s) by, click Login ID.
  5. Enter the person's VT Username (PID) in the Add People box.
    • Find the person's VT Username (PID) from Banner or departmental records.
    • Do not enter their email address because email aliases may interfere with Canvas recognizing the person.
    • Their VT Username (PID) is not necessarily the same as what's before the "@vt.edu" in their email address.
  6. Choose the person's Role and Section from the respective drop-downs.
    • You can add people to the course as Students, Teachers, TAs, Graders, Designers, and Teaching Consultants.
    • You can check Can interact with users in their section only to limit access to a single section in a cross-listed site.

      Image of the above instructions

  7. Click Next. Validate that you are adding the correct person(s).
  8. Click Add Users.
Bulk-adding Virginia Tech Affiliates to Canvas
  • Use bulk add for symposiums, orientation, academic advising, and other academic activities that aren't through an official course. 
  • Do not add students to official course sites because they are added automatically.
  1. Collect the VT Usernames (PIDs) of the people you are adding. VT Usernames (PIDs) are not necessarily the first part of Virginia Tech email addresses. 
  2. Create a file in Microsoft Excel. If you have multiple class sections, make a tab for each section.
  3. Enter the VT Usernames (PIDs) in a single column. You can enter names and email addresses in other columns. 
  4. Select and copy the column of the VT Usernames (PIDs). Do not include the column header. 
  5. Go to the Canvas site. 
  6. Click People then +People. 
  7. Under Add user(s) by, click Login ID.
  8. Paste the column of VT Usernames (PIDs) in the window. Set the role and section. You can only assign one role and section per batch. 
  9. Click Next.
  10. Click Add Users.

Adding (Non-Virginia Tech) Guests

See Adding Non-VT Guests to Course Sites.

Adding People to Concluded Course Sites

The +People and +Guests buttons in People will be grayed out if a course site is concluded. This is because Canvas restricts adding users in order to protect the integrity of student records. Please see Adding People to Concluded Course Sites and follow the instructions for your use case.

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Removing People

Teachers cannot remove enrolled students or other instructors of record from an official course sites.

  • They are added and removed according to their course enrollment status with the Registrar.
  • If you remove them, they will be added back the next time Canvas updates with registrar data. 

To remove someone you added manually:

  1. Go to the course site and click People. 
  2. Find the person you want to remove.
  3. In their row, on the far right, click the three dots, then click Remove From Course. 
  4. Click OK to verify.

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Getting Help

For instructions on resolving common issues with Canvas, see:

Instructure, the creators of Canvas, provide 24-7 Canvas support, including live chat and a support hotline.

To get Canvas help, click Help on any Canvas screen and choose from help options:

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