Date

June 4, 2026

Type

Knowledge Base (KB)

Owner

Joel Vanner

Instructors have the ability to self-add users into their Canvas courses with a few different roles.

If you want to manually grant someone access to help build, review, or support your Canvas course, this guide will show you how to add them in the People area. You can also fill out this QU IT form and request that they add the person to your Canvas course.

These steps are most useful when you need to add someone who is helping support or build the course, such as Peer Catalysts, Engagement Fellows, tutors, or librarians who need access to the course but, for FERPA reasons, should not have access to the gradebook. These instructions are also helpful if you need to share a course with another instructor for inspiration, support, or to copy content from.

Instructors assigned to the course in Colleague are automatically enrolled as a “Teacher” role. Any additional instructors who need the “Teacher” role in a course must be added through Colleague/ILP. QILT cannot add “Teacher” roles to your courses.

Students registered into the course through Self-Service are automatically enrolled as a “Student” role. Contact the Registrar with questions related to student enrollments. QILT cannot add students to your courses.

Adding Users

1. In your Canvas course navigation menu, select the People area.

2. In the “Everyone” tab, select the blue “+People” button. NOTE: If this button is disabled, read below.

3. Select to add users by “Email Address” (1) and type in the user(s) email address(s) with the format: first.last@quinnipiac.edu (2). Multiple emails can be separated by commas or new lines. Select the role that the user(s) should receive in the course (3) and the section they should be added to (if applicable). Note that you can only add one type of role at a time, so repeat these steps if users should have different roles. Learn more about roles in Canvas → To continue, select the blue “Next” button (4).

6. Verify that you see the green checkmark (1), and that the name and e-mail address is of the user(s) you intend to add to your course (2). If you don’t see the green checkmark, select “Start Over” and ensure you are using the correct e-mail address for the user(s). To confirm adding the user(s), click the blue “Add Users” button (3).

If you continue to have issues adding a user, please submit an IT request.

Adding Users if “+People” is Disabled

1. Open the Settings area of your Canvas course.
2. In the “Course Details” tab, change the “Participation” from “Term” to “Course” and set an “End Date” to be in sometime in the future.
3. Select the blue “Update Course Details” button in the bottom right.
4. Follow steps 2-6 in the guide above.
5. Go back to the Settings area of your Canvas course, and change the “Participation” back to “Term.”
6. Select the blue “Update Course Details” button in the bottom right.

Additional Resources

Select an icon below or visit our Canvas home page →