Canvas @ Yale

Adding / Removing Users in Your Course

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For official course sites, students that have enrolled in the course through the registration system will be added to your course site automatically. Users you need to add to your course site manually may include:

  • Teaching Assistants / Teaching Fellows
  • Guest Lecturers
  • Unofficially auditing students (official auditors should register officially with the registrar)
  • Students who are on a wait-list
  • Students who made revisions to their registration
  • Guests from other institutions
    • Guests from other institutions will need to have an account created for them in Canvas before you can add them to your course site. To request a guest account, please complete the Guest Account Request Form.

There are some roles in Canvas that are protected. These roles are to be used exclusively by the registration system (Banner) and must not be used when manually enrolling users in your course. Protected roles include:

  • Student
  • Visitor
  • Auditor
  • Instructor

The Poorvu and ITS Canvas LMS Support team will not add users to course sites.  Enrollment is at the discretion of the instructor and / or department registrar. To be added to a course, please contact the instructor of the course, a departmental / school registrar, or support person with administrative access in Canvas.

Table of Contents

This article will address the following information:

Adding a User

Not all NetID users are added to Canvas by default (examples are volunteers, past alumni, sponsored identities, vendors, contractors, etc.).

If you are trying to add a NetID user and are not finding them in the system, please contact [email protected] and provide the user's NetID so we can verify / add their account to Canvas.

  1. Click on "People" from the course navigation.
  2. Click "+People" at the top right corner.
  1. In the pop-up window, select how you want to add people, either by "Yale Email" or "NetID or Guest Email."
    1. A quick link to the Yale Directory is available to help look up an individual.

Yale Email: The user's email address MUST be confirmed or else they will not be found when searched for. Yale emails are automatically confirmed, however guest accounts require additional steps for confirmation.

NetID or Guest Email: For Yale users this field (also known as the Login ID) is their Yale issued NetID. For outside Yale guest accounts, this will be their email address.

  1. In the text box provided, type the user's information based on the "Add user(s) by" option you selected.
    1. You can add multiple users at once by putting a comma between each user.
  2. Select the user's intended "Role" and "Section."

Roles that you cannot use include:

  • Student
  • Instructor
  • Visitor
  1. Once the user's role is selected, the "Next" button will become available to click to go to the next step.
  1. Canvas will verify that the account is valid. If it is valid, you will see the message in green across the top "The following users are ready to be added to the course."
  2. Click the "Add Users" button to add the users to the course. If you are not ready to add the user, click the "Start Over" button to go back to the previous screen.
    1. Canvas will automatically send the user an invitation to participate in the course.
  1. Until the user accepts the course invitation, the user's status will display as "pending."
    1. Once the user has accepted the course invitation, you can interact with the user in the course. 

Adding a Guest Account User

Users who have had a guest account created in Canvas for them can be added to a Canvas course and participate in the same way that current Yale associated Canvas accounts can in a Canvas course site. To request a guest account for a user, please complete the Guest Account Request Form.

Once the guest account has been created, the process to add them to a course is more specific than the method detailed above.

  1. Click on "People" from the course navigation.
  2. Click "+People" at the top right corner.
  1. In the pop-up window, select the "NetID or Guest Email" option and input the guest account user's email address in the subsequent textbox.
    1. Canvas Guest Accounts are not provided a NetID, so they use their email address as their login name when logging into Canvas @ Yale.
  2. Select the user's intended "Role" and "Section."
  3. Once the user's role is selected, the "Next" button will become available to click to go to the next step.
  1. Canvas will verify that the account is valid. If it is valid, you will see the message in green across the top "The following users are ready to be added to the course."
  2. Click the "Add Users" button to add the users to the course. If you are not ready to add the user, click the "Start Over" button to go back to the previous screen.
    1. Canvas will automatically send the user an invitation to participate in the course.
  1. Until the user accepts the course invitation, the user's status will display as "pending."
    1. Once the user has accepted the course invitation, you can interact with the user in the course. 

Adding a User to Past Terms

When the course is in the past term, you cannot add users to the course (the "+People" button in the People tool will be grayed out or not present). In order to unlock the course to add users, please check out our help article on unlocking courses in past terms to add users.

When adding users to the unlocked course, the invited users must accept their invitation prior to the course resuming the past term, read-only state. If the user has not accepted the invitation, then the course will have to be unlocked again.

Removing a User

Users can be enrolled in multiple sections within your Canvas site. The instructions below are split between removing a user from all sections within your Canvas course (Option 1) or removing a user from just one section within your Canvas course (Option 2).

You can remove any user that you have manually added. If the user is being enrolled into the course by registrar data, you will not be able to remove them.

Option 1:  Remove a user from all sections within the Canvas Course
  1. From the "People" tool, click the three dots icon associated with the user you would like to remove.
  2. Click "Remove From Course."
Option 2:  Remove a user from a single section within the Canvas Course
  1. From the "People" Tool, click on the name of the user you want to modify.
  2. In the right side pop-out, click on the user's name again.
  1. On the user details page, scroll down to the "Membership(s)" section.
    1. From the list, find the course section you want to remove the user from and click on the "Delete" button for that enrollment.
  1. A pop up will appear asking you to confirm the deletion. Click the "OK" button.
  1. When the page updates, you will see only the user's remaining section enrollment(s) listed under the Membership(s) area.
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