Within Online@UT (Canvas), Primary Instructors have permissions to manually enroll users into their Canvas courses. When an instructor needs to add a user manually to their current, active Canvas course, it is important to consider what role they are using for enrollment. Adding a user to a Canvas course with the Teacher, TA, or Instructor (Primary or Secondary) role gives that user access to student information, assignment information, and grades. If a user has been added to a Canvas course with one of these roles that should not otherwise have access to student information and grades, then this results in a FERPA violation, as well as exposing the university to potential legal liability issues.

Securing Course Enrollments

• Have your co-instructors, TAs, and colleagues assigned to your course in Banner with the Secondary Instructor or TA role. These users will automatically get enrolled into course sites.
• Users with the role of Student cannot be added manually to Canvas courses.
• Users cannot be added to past course sites, as the sites have moved into a “concluded and read-only” state.

Please take extra care when manually adding users to Canvas courses in which you are the Primary Instructor. When in doubt, contact the Canvas support team before adding anyone. If necessary, the Office of the University Registrar can be contacted to find the most secure way for users to access your class.