CU Denver Roles and Permissions

Summary of Roles and Permissions at CU Boulder, UCCS, and CU Denver

Top-Level System Administrators
These personnel are able to access all of the information in Canvas at CU Denver. Additionally, IT administrators have the ability to access individuals’ accounts and act as users, as well as develop content for the system.

Sub-Account Administrators
These personnel have the same “super-user” (a term coined in the interview) abilities as top-level administrators, but they are exclusive to a particular college or school, meaning that they only have access to the account information of the people within said school. They are regarded as localized tech-support, and are only given permissions to access data if the dean of said college signs off on it.

Account-Level Roles
These people act as enrollment coordinators. Their access is much more limited than that of system administrators and sub-account administrators. They are only able to search courses and add or drop users.

CU Denver IT Service Desk
Both full-time technicians and student employees work at the CU Denver IT Service Desk. With the exception of access to certain special tools, they are given the same level of access to Canvas as top-level IT administrators, meaning that they are able to view nearly everything in Canvas. This extremely high level of access is justified in that it is often needed in order to troubleshoot issues with the system. Service desk personnel are put through FERPA training before being able to work with student data in Canvas. Additionally, student workers in this position are unable to access/troubleshoot any classes that they are enrolled in. If they are presented with an issue regarding a class that they are taking, they are required to pass it off to someone else within the department.

Instructors
At CU Denver, this role includes faculty and grad students, as well as part-time and full-time lecturers given the responsibility of teaching and overseeing a given course at the university. Instructors are able create and modify course content. They are also able to view all course material of enrolled students, grade assignments, offer feedback, and administer final grades for the class. Additionally, instructors have access to some very basic activity tracking services offered by Canvas, including the number of times a student has submitted an assignment, the timestamp for which that assignment was posted, the amount of time a student spends in a quiz, as well as which course materials students have accessed.

Teaching Assistants (TAs)
TAs at CU Denver are given very similar permissions to those of instructors. In the initial stages of the adoption of Canvas at CU Denver, some faculty members were adding unapproved users to their courses in the TA role, which caused some major issues regarding information security. CU Denver enacted a policy which states that all TAs for a course must be in the university’s system of record.

Grader
Graders are given less access than TAs. They are able to see any student submissions to the class for which they are designated, and they are able to assign grades and feedback to students. This role is not extensively used at CU Denver. Any additional support roles for course instructors are usually TAs, who have a wider scope of access.

Course Builder
Course builders are in charge of helping design courses taught at CU Denver. Their role is very limited. They are not able to access student content in these courses.

Student
Students are able to access and participate in courses that they are enrolled in. They have access to all of their information on Canvas, including submission history, grades, comments, discussions, calendar(s), etc.

Observer
Observers are allowed to view course content, but cannot participate in a course, or see student grades, unless they have been specially linked to a student in order to view their work. Observers were only briefly mentioned in this interview, and it is unclear if CU Denver extensively uses the observer role.

Course Builder
Course builders are in charge of helping design courses taught at UCCS. They are able to see a list of student names enrolled in the course, but they have no other access to student information.

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