When class sections that do not meet together are cross-listed into a single Canvas course, instructors should take steps to ensure student privacy and compliance with the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) . Specifically, students in courses with cross-listed sections should not be permitted to see or interact with students in sections other than their own unless the sections share a common meeting place and time.
Student enrollments are automatically configured to limit the visibility of students in other sections in the Canvas course. However, this setting does not cover all Canvas tools, so you’ll need to take additional steps to protect your students’ privacy.
Section privilege restrictions for students
By default, students are enrolled into Canvas courses with limited section privileges. This setting has no impact in single-section courses. When sections are cross-listed in Canvas, however, this setting prevents students from seeing the names, section affiliations, and user profiles of students in sections other than their own in the full roster view of the Canvas People tool, as well as in the Canvas Inbox (Conversations) and Collaboration tools.
Additional steps to ensure student privacy
To prevent students from seeing students in other sections in your course, you’ll need to disable or lock down tools that expose information about students in other sections.
Settings
Under Settings > Course Details > more options, make sure the selections are as follows:
- Check Disable comments on announcements
- Uncheck Let students create discussion topics
- Uncheck Let students organize their own groups
By default, the following tools are disabled in the course navigation:
- Chat
- BigBlueButton (formerly Conferences):
- Collaborations
People
When adding TAs to your course, select Can interact with users in their section only, and add them to only the sections for which they are responsible.
Groups
The names of all students are visible when students organize their own groups, regardless of section assignment.
- When creating groups, require group members to be in the same section.
Chat
The names of all students who post are visible, regardless of section assignment.
- Create separate groups for each section. Students can then chat with group members, all of whom will be in their own section.
Discussions
The names of all students who post are visible, regardless of section assignment.
- For graded discussions, create differentiated discussion topics restricted to individual sections.
- For ungraded discussions, use the “Post to” option to post topics to individual sections instead of the entire class.
- When creating groups for group discussions, create separate groups for each section.
The Discussions Redesign feature can be used to create discussions allowing for full student anonymity or allowing students to opt-in to anonymity.
Messages/Inbox
When sending a Canvas message to two or more students in different sections, check Send an individual message to each recipient. This will send a separate copy to each recipient and hide the names of the recipients in the message header.
Enable cross-section collaboration
If you intentionally wish to create collaboration opportunities with students in other sections in your course, you can work around the default section privilege restrictions by setting up mixed-section groups in Canvas, which will allow them to interact with one another in the group space as well as send messages to one another in the Canvas Inbox (Conversations) tool. For instructions for creating Canvas Groups, see How do I add a group set in a course? in the Canvas Instructor Guides. You can also remove the restrictions to Chat, Discussions, and Groups described above.
Before taking any action, however, let your students know why you would like to lift the privacy restrictions and request consent from each of them. Here are two ways you can request and document consent in Canvas:
- Use the Canvas Quizzes tool to give a one-question survey asking for consent to collaborate with students in other sections.
- When setting up your course groups, use the self sign-up option. In addition to mixed-section groups, create one group for each section. Tell your students that by signing up for a mixed-section group they are tacitly granting consent to collaboration with students from other sections.
Place any students who are unwilling to give consent in groups with members of their own section.
We would like to acknowledge Indiana University for creating a valuable resource (https://kb.iu.edu/d/aqns) that we were able to adapt.
