Adding users to a Canvas site

This article describes how to provide Canvas users, like TAs and auditors, with membership in your Canvas course site, which they access through PennKey

Do not manually add users as students or auditors;  this causes difficulty for the university registrar and within the course site itself. You may enable the observer role for students sitting in on a class and not submitting work.

  • If unregistered students must submit graded work, ask the IDEA Courseware Team to permit temporary student membership.
  • Auditors are automatically made members of a course site when they obtain formal audit status at their home school to meet a degree or major requirement. You never need to manually add them to a course site.

Adding/Removing a User in a Canvas Site

  1. Select People in the course navigation on the left.
  2. Click +People. *
  3. For Add user(s) by, select PennKey. (If you are instead prompted for Login ID, you can still enter the PennKey.)
  4. Enter the PennKey. To add multiple users (with the same role and in the same section) enter one PennKey per line.
  5. Select the correct role:
    • TA for a grader or teaching assistant. 
      • The TA should not have access to a course site in which they were previously enrolled as a student.
    • Limited TA for a teaching assistant who does not grade
    • Designer for a faculty colleague or administrative assistant
    • Observer for auditors or anyone else not expected to grade or submit coursework.
    • Do not add students or auditors.
  6. Select the correct section. 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., MGMT 2030 - Spring 2024). TAs added to a single section will still have rights to the entire site. (Contact Courseware if you need to restrict a TA to a single section.)
  7. Click Next. Contact Courseware if Canvas reports it cannot find the user.
  8. Click Add Users.

You can remove a user who was manually added to a course site, but not users who were added automatically.

*If +People is disabled, the course site is concluded; feel free to contact Courseware to have users granted membership in a concluded site.

Questions?

Email: courseware@wharton.upenn.edu