Comparing and using organization, development, and noncredit Canvas sites

Body

When requesting non-registrar Canvas sites, several factors should be considered. These involve use, how students will access the sites, and how enrollments will be maintained over the course of a semester or several semesters.

  • Will the site be rolling over with continuing enrollment, or will you start fresh every year? We recommend starting fresh with a new site so that old enrollments do not need to be removed, new enrollments can be easily added to your site and content can be refreshed.
  • How do you plan to add additional users to your sites and/or remove those who have graduated or left? You can use Canvas Catalog for sites where users add themselves (self-enroll) or add and remove users yourself, thereby controlling when they are removed. 
    ⚠️Note: Users external to UM System, using an alternative login, may only be added with the Student role.

Organization and self-enroll organization

Organization sites are used by groups of people who need to share content and/or communicate. Typically, they are used for communication within a department, between faculty in a department, or, in some cases, for projects involving individuals outside the university. Self-enroll sites are a type of organization site that allow students to sign up for a site with Canvas Catalog, rather than being added to it by site instructors.

Course site management

Request the Canvas site using the Canvas Request System, then, if needed, follow up with Academic Technology with more information to make it a Self-Enroll Canvas course.

User management

  • Organization teachers can add users to the site using Canvas and remove users using Canvas.
  • For a self-enroll organization site using Catalog as the registration platform, students can self-enroll in the Catalog course using the URL provided by the instructor. If needed, students must drop the self-enroll course site themselves directly from the Catalog student dashboard.
  • For a self-enroll organization site not using Catalog, organization teachers can add users to the site using Canvas and remove users using Canvas.
  • If you need to remove all users from a self-enroll site, we suggest creating a new site, as there is no way to bulk remove users.
  • If there are a very large number of organization enrollments, you may email your campus programmer with user information and details to see if they are able to do a bulk enrollment. Downsides to bulk enrollments are:
    • Unless the registrar approves an exception, the users will be in their own individual sections and unable to see each other in the site (including discussion forums).
    • If the programmer uploads the users, you will not be able to remove them yourself; you will have to refer back to the programmer for modifications.

Campus Programmers

MU: Request form
UMSL: Caleb Evans - evansc@umsl.edu
UMKC: Ling Li - liling@umkc.edu
MST: Sophia Kim - heoyj@mst.edu

Development or sandbox

Development sites are for Canvas course material development and should not be used for teaching. These may be for use by a single instructor, a group of instructors working on a course, or in conjunction with Instructional Designers.

Course site management

Request the Canvas site using the Canvas Request System.

User management

Development/Sandbox site teachers can add users to the site using Canvas and remove users using Canvas.

Noncredit course

Noncredit courses are primarily used with non-academic/non-registrar courses with free or pay-for course content. Noncredit courses can also be used for professional development sites or other sites with graded assessments. These are not registrar courses, and grades will NOT transfer to MyZou, MyView, Pathway or Joe’SS. 

For MU Extension

For all other non-credit sites

Canvas campus and vendor resources

Details

Details

Article ID: 255
Created
Wed 7/3/24 3:54 PM
Modified
Tue 2/17/26 2:23 PM

Related Services / Offerings

Related Services / Offerings (1)

Alternative Login Canvas accounts may be used for non-university affiliated, external users to gain access to Canvas with all levels of access, except for Teacher.