How to give a subset of students early access to assignments?

[EllenSpertus]

Ten students in my class of 180 are peer TAs, able to help classmates with their assignments. The peer TAs are expected to submit their own assignments early. I know how to make an assignment available to a student early. Do I need to paste in all ten students' names for all of these assignments, or is there a way to put the students in some sort of set that enables me to treat them as a unit?

I do not want these students to have all the privileges of TAs: They should not see quizzes early or be able to see or enter grades.

[TrishaMeyer1 · Accepted solution]

Hi @EllenSpertus ,

The answer to your question depends on how your course is set up and rostered and whether you have to sync to a separate Student Information System (SIS). If you have the rights to create sections, you could create a section for these students and then assign things to that whole section for a different date. They could also remain in the main section (the whole course roster), if needed/desired; students can be in more than one section.

Some caveats:

Your institution may not allow you the rights to create sections.

If you need to sync to an SIS, creating more sections will interfere with that process. A workaround is to send grades manually.

If you use Canvas Attendance, there may be ramifications from adding sections. I don't know because I have never used that program.

Note that you cannot use Canvas Groups for the purpose you describe; the Groups feature serves a different purpose.