Course with 65,000 enrollments... What issues might we encounter?

[chris_clement]

Hi All,

We're presently looking into the possibility of offering a course in partnership with a national organization.  This course would be offered via Catalog and may see 65k+ enrollments (25k bare minimum).

Right now this is more a thought exercise than anything concrete.  The various parties involved are working out the details of what this course might look like and what method we would use to process the enrollments.

My team has strongly suggested that the course be as simple as possible, preferably self paced.  We have warned of the possibility of maintenance/performance issues with the course as well as an increased tech support workload for things like account access (password resets).

Our question to the community is this...  What's the highest number of enrollments you have personally managed in a course?  What issues or lessons learned might you be able to share regarding your endeavor?

Any feedback is greatly appreciated.

Thank you!

-Chris Clement (Utah State University)

[cstrikwerda · Accepted solution]

Hello @chris_clement 

Thanks for your question regarding the maximum amount of enrollments a course can handle. With the prospect of a national organization we want to answer these questions as best we can. 

In my experience 

We have had ongoing conversations regarding this so I will be referencing those here, 
https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Canvas-Admin-Blog/Best-Practices-for-Large-Courses-in-Canvas/ba-p...

Canvas courses are optimised for 3,000 - 5,000 enrollments, and will remain performant with these numbers. As will all online tools, there are implications to be aware of when dealing with larger volumes, particularly with regards to load times and navigation. It is important to be aware of this, and really consider whether reaching the upper limits of student numbers is necessary in your context, or if other solutions could be found. Areas in particular to be aware of include:

Gradebook - using Sections, Modules, or Groups as filters will help
Discussions - navigation can become suboptimal when thousands of topics are in use, though the search and sort options can be of assistance here
Analytics - large student numbers will extend load times, but only up to a minute so hang in there!
Speedgrader- over 1,000 submissions will cause Speedgrader to have difficulty loading or fail to load submissions.

These are just a few suggestions of best practices but I would be glad to add my experience for larger courses as well. Many institutions employ use of Orientation courses, with nearly the entire faculty or student body enrolled in the course. In these instances, I have seen many with up to 5,000 enrollments. I can't personally say I have seen a course with over 10,000 enrollments, however. We might want to wait for the community to respond as far as best use cases they have experienced.

Hope this helps!