My local school does not use Canvas as their default LMS. I have created my own free teachers account. First semester, everything worked great. Students enrolled by using the join link which was generated under the settings. Now we are in a new semester. I have created a new course, or instance, for the second semester. Students with existing accounts are not able to join the new course via the join link. When they use the join link it directs them to create a new account. There is not an option, that I can see, to join by join code unless they create a new account. Am I missing something? I hope students will not have to create a new account for each semester, that is a bit of a pain. Of course, I am certain this can be averted if the school has a district-wide account, but what about an independent free account?

Thank you