Preferred Name

[RobertGibson]

Colleagues,

We are considering enabling the "Preferred Name" option. I have some questions about that feature that I can't seem to locate....

1) Is this feature a global student setting or is it course-by-course? I think it's global, but I can't tell.

2) We are not feeding this from Banner so I assume the SIS will not overwrite this update and revert to the non-preferred name (?)

3) Is the setting sticky beyond a term or does it need to be updated each semester? Or how often? If a student drops/adds a course will the setting be sticky?

I probably have some more questions....

[chriscas]

Hi @RobertGibson,

Could you possibly give a bit more detail on what you're considering?  I ask because "preferred name" is not really a Canvas term, but is definitely a term used in the Banner student information system.

If you're planning to enable preferred name in Banner, it would really depend on your connection between Canvas and Banner as to what would happen.  We are a Banner school with a custom script which sends data from Banner to Canvas.  When we implemented preferred name in Banner a few years ago, we changed our script to send a user's preferred name (if it exists, otherwise use the legal name) to all Canvas name fields.  This guarantees anyone who sets a preferred name in Banner will see it in Canvas.

The closest Canvas equivalent to the Banner preferred name (that I know of), is what Canvas calls the "display name".  Unfortunately, for students to edit the display name directly in Canvas, I believe you also have to give them the ability to change their regular/legal name as well.  How making a change in Canvas itself would interact with your Banner integration again depends on how things are coded.  Often SIS integrations will overwrite UI changes, but doing so is an option.  If you choose to not have Banner overwrite UI-changed fields, you can eventually get in situations where name info is very out of sync and may be had for teachers and admins to distinguish.  The preferred name in Canvas is displayed in many places vs the regular/legal name, but not everywhere, so going this direction also means a student's regular/legal name may be displayed in areas they don't want it to be.

Talking from experience, I feel like having Banner be the source of truth for legal and preferred name info is better than allowing changes in Canvas.  Doing things in Banner allows other systems to receive the name changes, and makes them slightly more official.  This does assume that your connection from Banner to Canvas is something your team can modify when needed.

I hope some of this info helps and aligns with what you were asking, but please do update us with your plans, thoughts, and questions!

-Chris

[RobertGibson]

The IT Team has determined that the name change in the SIS will take much more time than they can afford at present given the multiple systems it impacts. So, we're exploring a "cosmetic" change in Canvas only. (Some Instructure documentation refers to is as Display Name and some as Preferred Name)

So, what I'm reading is this:

1) Enabling this feature also allows them to change their Full Name. For better or worse. But....the SIS will change it right back again.

2) Changing the Display Name does not impact all areas of Canvas, such as the Gradebook, SpeedGrader, and People. However, the Full Name does.

3) Any changes made to pronouns or display name will be reflected in all Canvas courses, past and present. Canvas does not currently offer the ability to make changes isolated to specific courses.

4) It's still unclear to me if this setting is sticky for future courses, but I presume so. Under what conditions, however? If they make the change only while they are actively enrolled? What happens if they become inactive students and then active again?

5) It's unclear to me if the SIS as it stands now will overwrite the Display Name. I assume not. But, I also assume it will overwrite the Full Name (?)

Is this accurate? Also...

Display Name appears in Announcements, Conferences, Conversations, Inboxes, and Discussions.

Full Name appears in the Gradebook and Grades pages, Chat, People, and SIS imports

Sortable Name: defaults to your last name, first name and appears in sorted lists so admins can search for it.

[chriscas]

Hi @RobertGibson,

I'll first try to answer your questions to the best of my knowledge.

#1 - You are correct about the name change option, there is one switch that allows users to edit their name info (both display name and regular/legal name).  You could potentially put some custom css/javascript in place to try to disable editing of the regular/legal name, though that starts adding a lot of complexity.  We don't really have a way of knowing whether Banner will overwrite changes made in the Canvas UI.  It's an option that's part of the SIS import process in Canvas, so it just depends on how your Banner to Canvas integration is coded.  You'd probably need to set up a few fake users in Banner, then experiment with changing their info in Canvas to see if those changes remain after a few days or if they revert back to what's in Banner.  

#2 - That is correct.  Display name is not used everywhere in Canvas.

#3 - That is correct.  Name and pronouns are part of a user's information in Canvas, so any changes made would be global and affect all of the user's courses.

#4 - Similar to #3, the changes are all to the user's account, not specific past/present/future enrollments.  So as long as your Banner to Canvas integration does not overwrite name changes as discussed in #1, the change would be for future courses too.

#5- This is the same as #1.  You'd need to do some testing to see how your specific Banner to Canvas process works.  There are numerous different ways things could have been coded, so really anything is possible here.

One last comment somewhat on the tech side of things, but getting into policy/procedure a bit...  If you allow students to edit their name in Canvas, you'll need to be prepared for a couple things.  First, your teachers are going to need to depend on looking at something like a user's login name or email to identify them, especially for purposes of final grade entry in Banner.  It's very possible that John Doe could change their name in Canvas to Bruce Wayne, and when your teachers go to do final grade entry in Banner, they will not find a Bruce Wayne at all.  Second, users may start to enter inappropriate things for their name.  I think that may be slightly more of a concern in K12 than Higher-ed, but it has happened to us a few times in Banner.  You can't restrict what students can enter, so you'll probably want to have some kind of process developed for people to report inappropriate names and know ahead of time what someone might do about it (revert the name back to a student's legal name, email them to do it themselves, etc).

I do want to echo the comments made by @paul_fynn while I'm here.  I guess I alluded to this in my original post without actually saying it, but I feel like your school/institution should definitely develop some policies and procedures around this.  It's definitely not easy work, as there are some very personal and sensitive issues around all of this for users (both students and instructors/staff).  The users who want to change name info are honestly probably going to be unhappy with just being able to change name info in Canvas, even though Ido understand it may be easier to enable that option than doing anything in Banner.  As Paul mentioned, this is an ever-evolving area and I think we're all learning and trying to do the best we can, so maybe this really is the only thing you can offer your students right now.

The last thing I will say is that we do run a very un-customized/vanilla version of Banner here, as we don't have a ton of staff resources we can devote to developing and maintaining customizations.  Enabling preferred name and pronouns in Banner was relatively easy for our IT team as far as I know.  The harder work is actually getting other systems to use those names once they are enabled in Banner.  It took us a couple years (at least) to track down everything that was using name info from Banner and ensuring it was looking at the preferred name when possible (some things must still use legal name).  This is probably what your IT team is referring to, but if it's becoming an issue for your users, it's something that may be worth prioritizing at some point in the near future.

I hope this info helps without sounding too preachy or anything!

-Chris

[RobertGibson]

The Sortable Name may also be problematic. For example, a student changes it to "Wayne, Bruce" making it difficult for Admins and Helpdesk agents to trace activity and resolve issues. And what if they should do something egregious under that pseudonym, but then change it again? I wonder if Canvas traces the account name changes.

[paul_fynn]

Hi @RobertGibson , just to weigh in on a slightly different tack to @chriscas 

• gender identity has become increasingly important and politicised over recent years, with increasing obligations on organisations, and birth name vs legal name vs preferred name have implications and obligations according to your jurisdiction
• for Higher Education providers this is an important equality issue, and entry into HE (often co-inciding with 'legal age of maturity' and a move from parental home) is often the chosen point for transition of gender identity, or simply name
• if this is addressed in Canvas rather than in Banner (or other SIS) there is a risk that the student's former name becomes visible to staff and peers at first entry to the institution before the student has had a chance to express and affirm how they wish to be addressed

I would suggest

1) If this isn't already known to be important to students in your institution it will inevitably be at some point

2) It's important that the institution has clear policies addressing and implementing preferences, according to jurisdictional requirements, and to capture and deploy those preferences at the earliest possible point in the student's journey, and ensure that all applicants and current students know how that works

3) In my personal opinion this is a question to be primarily resolved within your SIS configuration, and then passed to Canvas in real time

Advanced apology for anyone who finds an issue with my terminology - this is a sphere where we are all on the learning curve.

[dbrace · Accepted solution]

Hi @RobertGibson,

I agree with pretty much everything said by @chriscas and @paul_fynn.

By not using Banner as a "source of truth", you could be opening up the various technical aspects (both within Canvas and in other systems) of your institution to a lot of confusion.

Related to what both of them said, students are less likely to provide an inappropriate name if they have to first enter it into another system before it is used in the Canvas LMS.

I would recommend using a process (it is what my institution does and has done since August 2015, when we were using a different LMS) that is similar to what @chriscas described:

1. make use of Preferred First Name in Banner
2. how ever you have it currently setup, setup your "connection" between Banner and Canvas so that Preferred First Name is used initially as a first name
3. if Preferred First Name is empty/null, use Legal First Name

Using Preferred First Name in Banner will also make it (as long as it is supported by them) possible to use in other systems as well.

-Doug