User in "Add People" automatically switched to other (related) user mid-course

[Steph_30]

The strangest thing happened to my Canvas course this week: I needed some help grading a larger group by a strict deadline, so I added a colleague to my course, inviting her using the "Add People". She accepted the invitation, and not too long after, I saw her feedback appear in some of the students' tasks. No issues so far.

However, today I got a message from her, asking if I could let her enter the course again. Whenever she clicked the link she had used before, she got the message she had no permission to view this course. I hadn't done anything to change her settings, so I was at a loss: why could she no longer access my course?

I went to look at the "People" tab, and sure enough, my colleague had vanished. And yet, there was still an extra teacher there: my colleague's daughter, who also has a Canvas account, but as a student in a completely different course. Her account had somehow managed to "usurp" my colleague's place in the course.

How is it possible a course just switches the access from one user to another?! My colleague and her daughter often use the same computer, but I still feel this should not cause an issue such as this. The two accounts have different IDs, and neither did anything to change the settings.

Is there a way to prevent this from happening in the future?

[greydon · Accepted solution]

Hello @Steph_30 

Thank you for contacting the Canvas Community. We're sorry to hear you've been experiencing issues with a user in one of  your courses. Thank you for explaining this in detail and it certainly sounds like abnormal behavior. No user within a course should be changed roles unless prompted manually by someone like a teacher or admin, or via a SIS update which would be a recurring event and not a one time anomaly. Are there other teachers within the course or any designers or admins that regularly accesses your course? It is peculiar the student from another course appeared within yours without your intervention. Because this is completely irregular behavior, we should be looking at specifics in order to find and resolve the issue.

Because of the complexity of the issue, and the concerns for privacy, it would be best if you contacted Canvas Support directly to pinpoint the source of the issue and provide a resolution:

https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Canvas-Basics-Guide/How-do-I-contact-Canvas-Support/ta-p/389767