In Permissions, Separate Manage (add/edit/delete) courses into 3 permissions

This idea has been developed and deployed to Canvas

Please change, nn Account Roles the  "Manage (add/edit/delete) courses" from a single setting to three separate settings.

 

Current:

Manage (add / edit / delete) courses

 

Should become:

  • User can Add courses
  • User can Edit courses
  • User can Delete courses

 

One reason for this request:

This would allow you to set Sub-Account Managers (or other roles) to having only the permissions needed for that role instead of none of them or all of them. For example, the ability to add a course but not to edit or delete a course.

 

Note: There is this one as well, In Permissions, Separate "Manage (create/edit/delete) course sections" into 3 permissions  (this is for the same thing but with sections and not courses)

 

Comments from Instructure

 

We have exciting news about the first phase of the Priority: Granular Permissions‌.  The New User Interface is included in the Canvas Production Release Notes (2018-07-14) .  Go check it out!

28 Comments
mlewis23
Community Champion

I'll support this with a up vote once open.

biray
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni

This idea is now open for voting. Smiley Happy

asatkins
Community Novice

Thanks again for creating all of these, Susan!

BROEKERC
Community Novice

Rationale: This feature would give greater access to our subaccount admins.  Right now we do not enable this because there is the possibility of accidental deletions.  If the permissions were unbundled we would be able provide subaccounts with the ability to add courses such as workbench sites for new faculty or even create workbench sites for new courses in development. 

cdoherty
Community Participant

Rationale for Stanford: This is the most important permission separation of all. We have run into the situation where instructors expect a TA or admin to run their course, therefore needing to be able to publish the course. However, this also means they can delete or conclude a course. Due to the severe consequences of deleting or concluding a course by accident, we want to restrict that to system support staff, while still allowing instructors and TAs the permission to publish courses without needing help from support.

millerjm
Community Champion

If the button is there, they will click it!  :smileyshocked: And then deny that they clicked it and wonder why whatever bad thing happened!!! 

We need to be able to give the following permissions: 

Publish course - TA, teacher, program managers

Conclude course - administrators only since instructors don't know the implication of concluding a course (not having access to much of the data)

Add course - this would be program managers and associate deans and departmental instructional support staff

Edit Course (dates, title, etc) - only certain sub-account admins and possibly program managers in certain departments who teach odd-term classes. 

Delete Course - administrators only

And, while we are on the Course permissions, this one is pretty scary :smileyalert: and our instructors have actually asked us to take it away: 

Reset Course Content - administrators only

mathew_williams
Community Novice

Excellent points! We are currently transitioning to Canvas and I was surprised to learn that course publishing is tied to the ability to add/delete courses. Coming from Moodle, this bundling of permissions has been a very difficult adjustment.

DeletedUser
Not applicable

We (University College Northern Denmark) also wants separate permissions options here.

In this permissions is the "student view" button which is a great feature for teachers. But to get this feature, we give teachers the rights toReset and Permanetly Delete course - giving some unfortunate situations for our teachers.

We therefore hope that you will develop a button (a permission) to turn the Student view on, but deselect all of the other functions in this permissions.

csalazar
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni

I understand the reasons why it would be helpful to separate out the delete permission. I'm looking into how big the effort would be and will post an update here.

-Cosme

kristy_bergeron
Community Participant

UW-Madison has a use case where we create new courses for instructors occasionally (sandbox courses, non-timetable/SIS courses, etc.) We have student workers who assist with that process -- it's not automated currently. We'd like to allow those workers limited permissions, such as the ability to add a course for someone but not edit it or delete it.