Adding Users

You can invite any current George Mason faculty, staff, or student to join your course at any time if the Add People button is available on the People page. Follow the instructions below or reference How do I add users to a course? for further information.

Step 1

Access Canvas, and enter the course. In the course navigation menu, click the People link. If you do not see People, go to Settings Navigation menu and follow the instructions to add it.

Step 2

Click the + People button to open the Add People window.

Step 3

To add a user, you can search for users in three ways:

• email address: This is a user’s full email address, e.g., [email protected]
• login ID: This is just a user’s net ID, i.e., their email without “@gmu.edu”
• SIS ID: This is a user’s G#, e.g., G12345678

To add multiple users, separate user information using a comma or a line break.

Step 4

Select user details.

• In the Role drop-down menu [1], assign the user(s) a role for the course based on available course roles. Reference the table below to understand what permissions are associated with which roles. Note: Not all roles are available in all courses. In particular, some courses do not allow instructors to add users with the Student role.
• In the Section drop-down menu [2], assign the user(s) a section in the course.
• If you want to limit the user(s) to only interact with other users in their section, click the Can interact with users in their section only checkbox [3].
• Note: If you are adding multiple users at the same time, all users inherit the same role and section.

Click the Next button [4].

Step 5

Confirm the users before adding them to the course. If any users were not found, click Back and verify your search entries.

Check the users found are those you intended [1].

When you are ready, click the Add Users button [2].

If Canvas did not find your intended user, you can click the Start Over button [3].

Additional Considerations

• These steps send users an invitation to join your course. Until the invitation is accepted, you will see them marked as pending on your People page. The user must accept the invitation to participate in the course.
• Users are not sent a course invitation until the course start date. (The start date is commonly the term date, unless the term is being overridden by a specific course or section date in Course Settings.) Additionally, courses must be published for students to receive course invitations.
• Roles and their permissions are additive. Consequently, if a user has more than one role in a course, the combined permissions of all assigned roles will apply to the user.
• If you want to add the same person to different sections, you can enroll them in one section and then add them to additional sections later.

Course Roles

Roles are essentially collections of permissions, which allow users to access certain features and perform certain functions. Instructors can choose a user’s role when enrolling them in a course but cannot modify the permissions associated with a given role. A user's permissions are determined by the role(s) the user is assigned.

Following are the course roles currently available: