Canvas Course Roles and Permissions
The chart below provides detailed information about the Canvas course roles and their corresponding permissions.
Schools and departments may assign Canvas Administrators who have unit-specific permissions to access Canvas.
Canvas Course Roles and Permissions
| Permissions | Student | Participant | Teacher/TA | Support | Designer | Grader | Observer |
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Add, edit, and delete events on the course calendar |
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| Add/remove other teachers, course designers, or TAs to the course | |
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| Add/remove students from the course | |
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| Manage course content | |
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| Post to discussions | |
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| See a list of users | |
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| View and edit all grades | |
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| Send and receive email | |
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Student Role
- Primary use: Students enrolled in a course site or students officially auditing a course through the Registrar's office.
- Permissions: The Student role has permissions to view course content and engage in course activities, including the ability to submit assignments, participate in discussions, and view the course roster.
- Limitations: Students cannot manipulate settings for a course.
Participant Role
- Primary use: Custom course site members site members, students unofficially auditing a course, and course observers.
- Permissions: The Participant role has permissions equivalent to the Student role, but is intended for use in custom course sites not provided by the Registrar. Participants may view course content and engage in course activities, including the ability to submit assignments, participate in discussions, and view the course roster.
- Limitations: Participants cannot manipulate settings for a course.
Teacher Role
- Primary use: Instructors assigned to teach a class.
- Permissions: Teachers have all course-level permissions, including the ability to add, edit and delete all content in a course, edit course settings, and manually add individuals with active Canvas user accounts.
- Limitations: None.
Teaching Assistant (TA) Role
- Primary use:TAs assigned to a specific class section.
- Permissions:TAs have permissions equivalent to the Teacher role. They have all course-level permissions, including the ability to add, edit and delete all content in a course, edit course settings, and manually add individuals with active Canvas user accounts.
- Limitations: None.
Support Role
- Primary use: Department or other support staff.
- Permissions: The Support role has permissions equivalent to the Teacher role. Users with the Support roles have all course-level permissions, including the ability to add, edit, and delete all content in a course, edit course settings, and manually add individuals with active Canvas user accounts.
- Limitations: None.
Designer Role
- Primary use: Department staff, content providers, and other instructional support staff.
- Permissions: Create course content, discussions, announcements, assignments, quizzes, and other content features.
- Limitations: Designers cannot add other individuals to a course and cannot access grades or Registrar data.
Grader Role
- Primary use: TAs or other staff.
- Permissions: Graders can view submitted student work and enter grades and comments. They can also view files, announcements, assignments, gradebook, and quizzes.
- Limitations: Graders cannot manage course content, manage messages, view discussions, view question banks, or view student pages.
Observer Role
This is a default role in Canvas. It is not actively recommended for use at Northwestern.
- Primary use: Parents, guardians, mentors, advisors, and others who need to monitor the progress of a student in a course.
- Permissions:Observers have access to view course content. This role can be linked to a student enrolled in a course in order to monitor his or her progress.
- Limitations: Observers have no permissions to edit or participate in course activities.
Last Updated: 20 December 2018
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