LMS Policy Definitions

The information on this page applies to all instructors, students, staff, and others who use the Canvas LMS system for academic coursework.

LMS Course Site User Roles

All courses with a listing in WorkDay automatically have Canvas sites created for them. Sites for projects categorized as ‘IQP’, ‘MQP’, ‘PQP’, ‘ISP’, ‘SUFF’, ‘ISG’, ‘THES’, ‘DR’, ‘PHD’ in WorkDay may not automatically created though they can be requested by filling out the LMS Course/Organization Request Form.

TA’s, Graders, Course Builders, or Co-Instructors can be specified on the LMS Course/Organization Request Form. Additionally, access can be given to a faculty associate, peer-learning assistant, reference librarian or other course staff that serve similar roles. To do this, an e-mail from the Instructor of Record is required. The e-mail should be sent to the Canvas help team at canvashelp@wpi.edu with the name and WPI e-mail address of the person(s) that needs to be added, what level of access they need, and the course number they need access to.

The following table summarizes the course site access levels and privileges:

For projects manually created and ID’ed as ‘IQP’, ‘MQP’, ‘PQP’, ‘ISP’, ‘SUFF’, ‘ISG’, ‘THES’, ‘DR’, or ‘PHD,’ project team members are generally enrolled in sites with TA-level privleges. Project Advisors are given the Instructor role. Please note, Canvas sites may not be automatically created for all projects. A project site can be requested by filling out this form.

Organization Site (e.g. committees, workgroups, student organizations) role privileges are the same as courses.

Definition of a LMS Course Site

Each term, including summer, a course “site” will be created for every WorkDay course in the current semester. For example, prior to the beginning of Fall term, sites will exist for A-term, B-term, and the Fall semester. Faculty may begin working with their course sites as soon as they are created and appear under the menu Courses > All Courses under “Future Enrollments” until the Term begins, and then it will move to the heading for “Current Enrollments.”

LMS course sites are defined in the system using the ID associated with the course from the catalog and WorkDay.

For example:

When a course is created in WorkDay WorkDay, a Canvas site is automatically created during the hourly snapshot process using DEPTCAT-TERM-SEC. In the example above, the resulting Canvas course site ID would be: ES2001-C22-C01. For courses where there are multiple sections taught by a single instructor, Canvas sectional sites can be merged into one course site.

For example:

In the above example, sections C01-C05 can be merged into one MASTER Canvas site and the resulting course site ID would be: PH1110-C22.

For courses where there are multiple instructors teaching two different lectures, instructor initials would also be associated with the course ID, or DEPTCAT-TERM–INT-SEC

For example:

The resulting MASTER course site ID for sections C01-C05 would be PH1110-C22-JI-C01 and sections C06-C10 would be PH1110-C22-SI-C06. Enrollments for each of the corresponding sections would be populated into the appropriate MASTER course site.

Terms

The basic function of a term is to give a default set of start and end dates to any course assigned to that term. Terms and the specific start and end dates are added manually.

Not all courses within a term conform to the term dates, and course start dates and end dates may override the established term dates.  More information about how to override default term dates.

Generally, the term begins and ends on the dates established by the Registrar.  These dates dictate when Students may Participate in a course.  Students retain Read Only Access for 1 week prior to the term start, and for 2 weeks after the term end. Students only gain this access once an instructor has Published their course.

Faculty may begin working on their course sites as soon as the WorkDay feed adds their course into Canvas, generally this is a few months before the term begins.  Faculty will retain Read Only Access for 6 years after the term ends.  If faculty wish to extend Participation access to their course past the traditional end date, they may follow the instructions to override default term dates and extend course availability.

Example Term Dates

Go back to LMS Policy Definitions on the ITS Service website.