Allow Act As (or View As) for students, but restrict other admin capabilities.

[swolz]

I'm the Canvas admin for our district. We are a K-12 school with an alternative education program for students who have been suspended. The Alternative Education Instructors are requesting access to the Act As feature, since the students they have come from anywhere in the district, and the Alternative Education Instructors need to be able to see what the Classroom Teacher is assigning, and what the students are submitting.

Are there other options besides enrolling the Alternative Ed Instructors into the course as teachers, or giving them the Act As feature?  Since the students they have can vary anywhere from 10 days to a whole semester, trying to manually add or remove them from a class would be difficult to manage. However, I'm not comfortable with all the other capabilities that come along with making them an admin. Ideally, I'd like to only give them Act As access, or a View As access (which I don't know if that exists) without other elevated permissions.

[mzimmerman · Accepted solution]

Hi @swolz,

Are you primarily looking at "Act As..." to allow the Alternative Ed instructors to view the course from the teacher's point of view, or from the student's?  If you are primarily giving the student's view, then it seems like making them Observers of the students might work, since that is effectively giving them "View as" permissions for  the student in all of their classes.