For Faculty and Staff - The following FERPA guidelines regarding protections around student data and the appropriate use of Canvas are administered through collaborative monitoring by Registration and Records, the Deans Area, and Academic Technologies/OIT.
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[hide]Site Visibility and Who Has Access
- Evergreen's Canvas sites are private by default, they are NOT visible to the public.
- A program or course Canvas site is visible/available to
- the faculty and students who are officially associated with the program/course as determined by the Curriculum Area and Registration
- anyone in the position of Dean for purposes of site review
- Academic Technologies (IT) staff who have Canvas admin access to provide technical and instructional support
- people who have been added manually either by faculty request, request from PaCE, or for Access Services/Accessibility purposes
Appropriate Use of Canvas Sites by Multi-Term Programs
Canvas sites are provisioned per term.
- A single-term program/course is provisioned a single site.
- A multi-term program is provisioned a separate Canvas site for each term of the program. (We are not able to provide single Canvas sites that span multiple terms.)
Students in multiple term programs can be allowed to see other students in the program for the term in which they are officially registered but not for terms during which they have not been or are not registered. Allowing someone access to class information (rosters, student papers, etc.) in Canvas for a time period in which a they are not registered can violate students' rights to privacy by sharing protected information.
For example:
- A program that runs Fall, Winter, and Spring quarters will be provisioned three Canvas sites, one for each term.
- Enrollment, as determined via registration, may fluctuate from quarter-to-quarter, with each quarter's enrollment being specific to each term's Canvas site.
This means
- the Fall site needs to be used for Fall-only
- the Winter site needs to used for Winter-only
- the Spring site needs to used for Spring-only
In other words - a Fall site should not be extended to use for the Winter term in lieu of using the actual Winter site provided, etc.
If you use a Canvas site for a term it is not intended for, the following issues occur:
- enrollment will not be accurate
- thus causing FERPA conflicts and non-compliance
- confusion for students
- if content is changed/deleted at a site being used for a different term, this impacts students who were rightfully registered for the original term of the site
For any questions, please contact Registration and Records or Academic Technologies.
Appropriate Use of Canvas by Any Program or Course
Manually Adding Users to a Curricular Canvas Site
To avoid possible FERPA mishaps, faculty do not have the ability to add users at their curricular Canvas sites. (It may appear to work, but it doesn't. See below for details.)
Requests to have someone added to your site in any of the following Canvas roles may be submitted via help.evergreen.edu with pertinent details (e.g. which site are they to be added to; person's name, Evergreen email; which role)
- Observer (needs read-access - ability to view most content at site, view Announcements, download files)
- TA (almost same permissions as the Teacher role - program assistant, SIT, workshop facilitator)
- Teacher (needs full edit access - e.g. faculty, instructor)
The Canvas "Student" role is reserved for people who are officially registered for an offering.
- Canvas will seem to allow you to add people, but if that person is not associated with the offering via Banner, the add won't stick, they will get bumped out.
- Because the Canvas "Student" role is tied with Banner, even IT staff are not able to add people in the "Student" role to a Canvas site connected with the auto-enrollment system.
How to Request Adding Program Assistants/TAs or Faculty to Your Canvas Site
- To have a Program Assistant/TA added, or another faculty member, please submit a request to Academic Technologies via help.evergreen.edu.
- Please note - if you are requesting a student assistant be provided the Canvas "TA" role at your Canvas site, that student cannot be registered for the offering.
How to Request Adding a not-yet-registered Student to Your Canvas Site
If you have a student who is committed to registering for your program/course but they are experiencing an issue/delay with registration, please submit an LMS Access Exception Request via help.evergreen.edu.
How to Request Canvas Access for an ILC or Internship Student
Due to FERPA, ILC or internship students cannot be added to Canvas sites they are not registered for.
- If there is content on a Canvas site that may aid in the student's success, there are two options for providing access:
- Faculty can provide the student materials via Microsoft 365, email, or in-person.
- Submit a request at help.evergreen.edu to have a copy made of the Canvas site you would like the student to have access to, and you and the student will be added to this site.
