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Canvas Rostering Guide: How It Works and How to Update Your Roster
Introduction
The rostering process begins when you click the “Authorize” button after launching the Education Modified (EdMod) application within Canvas. By authorizing, you grant Education Modified secure access to retrieve data from your Canvas account on your behalf.
Once authorized, EdMod begins accessing data to pull in your course and student roster information.
How Rosters are Retrieved
Course Identification
EdMod retrieves all Active, Published courses in which you are enrolled as a Teacher, Teaching Assistant, or Observer. These courses are visible on your All Courses page in Canvas.
Student Membership Pull
For each identified course, EdMod pulls all Student Members and generates a student profile within the platform for each.
Note: Canvas only shares the role each user has within a specific course—not their overall role in the system. For example, if a teacher or parent is enrolled as a student in a course, they will appear as a student within EdMod.
How it Appears in Education Modified
Once the data is retrieved, it populates your Student Information view in EdMod.
- You can filter students by course or group.
- Selecting the “All” checkbox will display your full roster.
- Each course contains an individual student profile for each enrolled student.
How to Manually Update Rosters
Education Modified automatically syncs with Canvas to pull course and student information, which simplifies roster maintenance. However, the initial sync may take longer if you are associated with many courses and students.
To help streamline this, EdMod only requires users to authorize access and refresh their rosters once every 7 days.
If you are expecting recent changes that have not yet appeared in EdMod, you can manually refresh your roster using the steps below.
How to Update
Open Education Modified within Canvas. Navigate to the Student Information page and click the Refresh button in the upper right-hand corner.
You will be directed to an authorization screen. Click “Authorize” to grant EdMod continued access to Canvas data.
After authorization, you’ll return to EdMod. A message stating “Your Roster is Updating” will appear in the bottom-right corner of the screen. The update may take some time, especially for large course rosters.
You may continue to use EdMod as usual, but please note that the updated roster data will not be available until the refresh is complete.
Once the update is complete, a confirmation message—“Update Complete”—will appear in the bottom-right corner of the screen. Your roster data should now be fully updated.
