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How do I add a TA to my UO Canvas course?

Help! I will happily buy a Martini at the faculty club for someone who can explain this.

19 Comments

  1. Anonymous 01/19/2018

    Don’t ask me why, but …
    On Canvas click on “Help” on the left side. Select “Ask UO Canvas Support.” Fill out the requested information (Page 1: your info; Page 2: College + Department; Page 3: Ask to add TAs to your course – specify their names, email, and role (GE)). Final Question “Do you want to add people?”, click “No.”

    • uomatters Post author | 01/19/2018

      Wow, that is 2 Martinis weird. I followed the steps above and if it works I owe you. Thanks!

      • uomatters Post author | 01/19/2018

        It worked – they added my TA manually. See you at the Faculty Club next Wed, Anonymous?

        • Anonymous 01/19/2018

          Sure! I’ll be there sometime after 5:30 (after class).

  2. Anonymous 01/19/2018

    My understanding is that the administration was concerned about FIRPA issues. Accordingly, it removed the ability of faculty to manually add someone to a Canvas course.

    • uomatters Post author | 01/19/2018

      In my experience whenever the administration says they are worried about FERPA there is something else going on, usually involving an athletics scandal. I wonder if Jock Box employees got caught monitoring the athletes on the sly?

  3. honest Uncle Bernie 01/19/2018

    If that is too hard — give them a call! They will set you up fast.

  4. John NIcols 01/19/2018

    I have succeeded in doing so [adding an assistant] but had to ask CMET to do it. I sent CMET the name and ID number of the assistant and it was implemented quickly. It is not clear to me, however, if this is a Canvas problem or a UO-Canvas issue.

    • Dog 01/19/2018

      The UO has decided that the add people button in Canvas (which ever other University in the US has), is, by our lens, “Non-FERPA
      compliant”.

      While others might say here that this there are simple solutions -call them, email them, fill out a form – the scale of this disconnect does seem to be appreciated as there are about 1200 GTFs that
      need to be manually added each term – yeah, that’s efficiency.

      I have complained about this at the Deans level (which of course goes both unacknowledged and completely ignored) as an example of a small issue that nonetheless affects a large number of faculty, that can be solved by leadership.

      Remember, once upon a time (about 5 terms ago) we did have the add people button – then it disappeared, no faculty were told of this, and then faculty wanted to add TAs on the first day of class …

      • honest Uncle Bernie 01/19/2018

        All true, dog, I do remember. It is not the fault of Canvas, whose personnel I have generally found to be helpful, if sometimes a little brusque.

    • honest Uncle Bernie 01/19/2018

      My understanding is that it is somehow a FIRPA – related issue, i.e. federal privacy law.

      Perhaps simplifying this will be at the top of the Trump administration deregulation priorities. Right?

    • UOID is sacred 01/24/2018

      Oh dear, you put a UOID number in email? Tsk tsk.

  5. Environmental necessity 01/19/2018

    Grateful that our folks identified the FERPA risk overlooked by hundreds of other universities where it remains simple to add individuals of varying statuses to courseware platforms. We are so lucky to dodge the bullets they are taking.

  6. OMG, does this make me miss BlackBoard? 01/19/2018

    I wasted a huge amount of time looking for the “add someone to your course” button (in the FAQs, Help files, online searches, etc.) before finally contacting the Canvas people. When there is something so obviously broken, they should insert an alert where the missing button/option used to be located, saying something like “Looking for the “Add someone” option? Go here instead”. Perhaps this was announced in one of the endless emailed Canvas Notifications but, if I took time to read all of them, I’d have even less time to try setting up my course with defective courseware.

  7. Dog 01/22/2018

    Hey I believe this blog actually produced action on this issue according to the recent message (as of today) on Canvas.

    Good

    Talking to administrators above me, certainly produced nothing.

  8. uomatters Post author | 01/22/2018

    Thanks for the bark-out Dog. The new message on Canvas:

    Add a GE
    To add a Graduate Employee to your course, please fill out the form here. (Links to an external site.)

    A recent software update to Canvas broke the UO customization that previously allowed UO instructors of record to add GEs while remaining in compliance with University policy and the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974 (FERPA). The UO is the process of automating the data feed from Banner to Canvas to include GEs. In the meantime, UO staff are manually adding GEs as quickly as possible. We apologize for the inconvenience.

    This is a message for University of Oregon

    A simpler solution, of course, would be to trust the faculty to add their own TAs, just as the university trusts us with regard to other FERPA matters. Or perhaps our General Counsel’s Office plans to start monitoring the faculty with spot checks, to make sure to make sure we don’t let students peek at each others scores when we’re passing back homework?

    I’ll stick with my hypothesis that this TA thing relates to some sort of athletic scandal, as usual.

    • Well of course 01/23/2018

      This would violate official policy.

  9. Tres 01/24/2018

    It finally happened for me. It took two weeks. By this measure Bill owes me two martinis.

    • uomatters Post author | 01/24/2018

      You’ve got the causality reversed. See you at the faculty club. Bring some cash or a flask.

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