This article describes how to provide Canvas users, like TAs and auditors, with membership in your Canvas course site, which they access through PennKey.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Please do not manually add users as Student or Auditor in your Canvas course site; doing so causes difficulty for the University Registrar and within the course site itself.
- Starting in Spring 2024, students with registration holds may encounter delays in Canvas membership related to timing of when enrollment becomes official at the University level.
- When an unregistered student not facing a hold must submit graded work in your course, contact the IDEA Courseware Team to inquire about Canvas membership possibilities for them.
- True auditors will automatically be given Student membership in a course site when they obtain formal audit status in that course, at their home school, in order to meet a degree or major requirement. If you had granted a formal auditor the Observer role in Canvas, Student will be added automatically based on the Registrar's process.
Adding a User to a Canvas Site
- Select People in the course navigation on the left.
- Click the +People button. *
- For Add user(s) by, select PennKey. (If you are instead prompted for Login ID, you can still enter the PennKey.)
- Enter the PennKey username.
- To add multiple users (with the same role and in the same section) enter one PennKey per line.
- Select the correct role:
- TA for a grader or teaching assistant.
- IMPORTANT: The TA must not be granted membership access to a course site in which they are enrolled as a student. (Contact the Courseware Team with any questions about this recommendation.)
- TAs added to a single section will normally have access to the entire Canvas site, similar to the instructor's access. (Contact the Courseware Team to arrange TA access restricted to specific sections of a multi-section course, or when a TA needs to be able to publish the Canvas site.)
- Limited TA for a teaching assistant who does not grade.
- Designer for a faculty colleague or administrative assistant.
- Observer for students informally sitting in, or anyone else not expected to grade or submit coursework.
- IMPORTANT: A few faculty use Observer role to accelerate Canvas membership for waitlisted students. Be aware this is a manual process an instructor may choose to do, rather than a service Wharton Computing provides.
- Do not add anyone to the Student or Auditor role.
- TA for a grader or teaching assistant.
- Select the correct section.
- Except in special cases, always avoid checking the "Can interact with users in their section only" checkbox.
- It is recommended to add TAs and observers to the site's "default" section, which will typically include the course code, semester, and year (e.g., ACCT 2790 - Summer 2025) but not any section number.
- Please contact the Courseware Team if you're not sure which section to use.
- Click Next.
- If Canvas reports it cannot find the user, please contact the Courseware Team.
- Click Add Users.
- An invitation will then be sent from Canvas to the user's email address.
You can resend an invitation under People. The user can also accept the course invitation by going directly to the canvas site url.
You can remove a user who was manually added to a course site, but not users who were added automatically.
*If +People is disabled, that means the course site is concluded. Please contact the Courseware Team to grant membership to users in a concluded course.
Questions?
Email: courseware@wharton.upenn.edu