UCCS Roles and Permissions

Correct Answers to Survey Questions

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

System Administrators
System administrators at UCCS have the ability to act as any student and enter a course through a particular account to see the exact actions of that student on Canvas. For example, if a student says that they submitted an assignment that was not received by the instructor, the level of access granted to system administrators would enable them to access the student’s account and see exactly what they did in submitting that assignment, to hopefully be able to troubleshoot the issue. Administrators take security very seriously. If a student needs help troubleshooting something with the system, they are required to present their ID prior to receiving help.

System administrators are responsible for creating courses at UCCS. They are also able to grant any party within the university (usually faculty and students) access to a particular course, as well as take it away. If a faculty member is having an issue with a student in a class that they are teaching (e.g., the student is involved in a case of harassment) faculty must come to the administrators in order to have the student removed. Likewise, if a student is waitlisted, the administrators are the only ones with the ability to add that student to the course. They are very conservative on permissions at UCCS. However, all of this is open to discussion. People are able to bring up concerns they have, and there are always extensive conversations on the pros and cons of proposals before they are installed into the framework of Canvas at the university.

There are currently four of these personnel at UCCS, consisting of two programmers, and two faculty liaisons. Three of these four individuals were also administrators for Blackboard before the switchover to Canvas. All four have direct access to everything on the Canvas system at UCCS.

College Administrators
These personnel play the role of “sub-administrators” in Canvas. They are not able to create courses, they cannot get into courses, and they cannot give or take away access to courses.

Organization Leaders
This is a term from Blackboard that carried over into Canvas when UCCS made the switch. Both courses and in-site administrative groups were referred to as “organizations.” Organization leaders have the same access permissions/restrictions as college administrators, aside from the fact that they are able to add students to courses. They are also able to add their own people to permanent courses UCCS has permanent course modules set up for some of their courses, unlike CU Boulder, which allows faculty to request courses. At UCCS, faculty are not allowed to create courses, nor can they add or or drop students from a class. All of these actions must be taken to the administrative level.

Excel Center Directors
Excel Center Directors are the heads of resource-providing departments in divisions such as student success. They collect aggregate data from Canvas for analytic purposes.

Instructors
This role includes faculty, 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 unable to add or remove students, and they cannot create courses in Canvas. They are able to create course content and upload grades. 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.

TA (Teaching Assistant)
This role is very similar to that of the instructor in terms of permissions. They are granted the same level of access as instructors, but they are not able to add or remove course content.

Grader (Grading TA)
This role is 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. They do have access to a limited student roster (just names), and are able to message students in relation to grading/assignments.