How to Invite students to participate in my course? I just finished building my course in Canvas.

[JohnSchreiner]

I just finished building my first course in Canvas, but I'm not sure how to send my students the invitation to join and participate in the course. Thanks!

[Chris_Hofer · Accepted solution]

@JohnSchreiner ...

Are you using the Free For Teachers version of Canvas (located at canvas.instructure.com)?  Or, does your school use a paid version of Canvas (located at YourSchoolName.instructure.com)?  If you are using the FFT version of Canvas, you should be able to enroll students via the "People" page of your course:

How do I add users to a course?

If your school is using a paid Canvas environment, your school may have things configured so that you do not have to do any enrollments yourself.  It may be handled by their IT department or Online Learning department.  One of the common ways this happens is via SIS (Student Information System) import.  So, you may want to have a conversation with folks at your school to see how enrollments get processed from their SIS into your Canvas course(s).

There is one other way that you could set up enrollments for your course...and that is via self-enrollment.  Here is a Guide that explains how this works ... where you can provide a unique URL for the course to give to students that you want to have in your course.

How do I enable course self-enrollment with a join code or secret URL?

Hopefully some of these things will help...but keep us posted...thanks!

[Chris_Hofer · Accepted solution]

@JohnSchreiner ...

Are you using the Free For Teachers version of Canvas (located at canvas.instructure.com)?  Or, does your school use a paid version of Canvas (located at YourSchoolName.instructure.com)?  If you are using the FFT version of Canvas, you should be able to enroll students via the "People" page of your course:

How do I add users to a course?

If your school is using a paid Canvas environment, your school may have things configured so that you do not have to do any enrollments yourself.  It may be handled by their IT department or Online Learning department.  One of the common ways this happens is via SIS (Student Information System) import.  So, you may want to have a conversation with folks at your school to see how enrollments get processed from their SIS into your Canvas course(s).

There is one other way that you could set up enrollments for your course...and that is via self-enrollment.  Here is a Guide that explains how this works ... where you can provide a unique URL for the course to give to students that you want to have in your course.

How do I enable course self-enrollment with a join code or secret URL?

Hopefully some of these things will help...but keep us posted...thanks!

[JohnSchreiner]

Thanks for your help! I'm using the Free for Teachers version, I did find where I could add people under the "people" tab. I'm using the account for two purposes, I am a math teacher at a private school (which does not have Canvas as a school), and I will also use it to do trainings for a business that my wife and I own together. To test out the feature and see how it looks, I invited my wife to the one week training we just made for our business, and that worked fine, but she just noticed it was kind of weird how the first sentence of the email said: "You've been invited to participate in a class at Free For Teacher." I don't mind them knowing I'm using the free version for teachers, but the wording of that sentence just seems awkward. Is there a way to change or customize the intro message for new students? If not it's not a huge deal, and if that's the only downside of using the free version I'll take it. If there is a way to change/ customize I'd like to know though. Thanks!!

[Chris_Hofer · Accepted solution]

Hello @JohnSchreiner ...

Thank you for the additional information.  To my knowledge, there isn't a way to change the text in the e-mail invitation that your wife received.  In fact, I know that folks that use the paid version of Canvas have also asked if the text can be changed, and I've not really seen many solutions to do so.  (Though I could be wrong.)  There is an existing Canvas Feature Idea called:

Ability to brand Canvas notifications - Instructure Community (canvaslms.com)

...and it might meet some of your needs.  You could post a comment giving an example like the one you provided above, and you could also give it a star rating.

How do idea conversations work in the Instructure ... - Instructure Community (canvaslms.com)

Hope this helps a bit.