Roles in Canvas


Role in Canvas

Instructors of Record listed in Banner are automatically assigned the Teacher role. Teachers may assign the TA role to authorized persons. Undergraduates may NOT be enrolled as TAs in any course.

The Designer role may be assigned to support personnel or GTAs helping to construct the course by adding materials, etc.

The Viewer role is intended to facilitate Teachers sharing their course design and information with other teachers or with administrators. Please email biggiotech@auburn.edu if you'd like to enroll someone as a Viewer. 

Anyone assigned to any of these roles must be an AU employee or student. Use ONLY the AU Username to assign persons to any of these roles.


In addition to seeing all course content, each role in Canvas allows users some additional abilities:

Ability in Canvas  Teacher TA Librarian Designer Viewer Undgraduate Support
Add, edit and delete events on the course calendar  Yes Yes No Yes No No
Add/remove other teachers, course designers or TAs to the course  Yes No No No No No
Add/remove students for the course  No No No No No No
Change course state  Yes No No No No No
Create student collaborations Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes
Create web conferences Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes
Edit grades (includes assessing rubrics) Yes Yes No No No No
Manage (add / edit / delete) assignments and quizzes Yes Yes No Yes No No
Manage (add / edit / delete) course files Yes Yes Yes Yes No No
Manage (create / edit / delete) course sections Yes Yes No No No No
Manage (create / edit / delete) groups Yes Yes No Yes No No
Manage alerts Yes No No No No No
Manage all other course content Yes Yes No Yes No No
Manage faculty journal entries Yes Yes No No No No
Manage learning outcomes Yes No Yes Yes No No
Manage wiki (add / edit / delete pages) Yes Yes Yes Yes No No
Moderate discussions ( delete / edit other’s posts, lock topics) Yes Yes No No No No
Post to discussions Yes Yes Yes No No Yes
See the list of users Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes
Send messages to course members Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes
View all grades Yes Yes No No No No
View all students’ submissions and make comments on them Yes Yes Yes No No No
View and link to question banks Yes Yes No Yes No No
View discussions Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes
View the group pages of all student groups Yes Yes Yes No No Yes
View usage reports for the course Yes Yes No Yes No No