Teaching Team Workflows

Teaching team commands require careful permission handling and safety gates. The same binary supports teachers, TAs, graders, designers, and admins where Canvas permissions allow it.

Course operations

canvas courses list --enrollment-type teacher
canvas courses get 123
canvas courses tabs --course 123
canvas courses export-context --course 123 --out course-context.json

Roster

canvas enrollments list --course 123
canvas sections list --course 123
canvas users list --course 123

Roster commands support filtering by section, role, state, and search string.

Assignment operations

canvas assignments list --course 123
canvas assignments get --course 123 456
canvas assignments update --course 123 456 --due-at 2026-06-30T23:59:00Z --dry-run
canvas assignments update --course 123 456 --published true --dry-run

High-risk assignment updates require --confirm.

Bulk submission download

canvas submissions download --course 123 --assignment 456 --out submissions --dry-run
canvas submissions download --course 123 --assignment 456 --out submissions --confirm
canvas submissions download --course 123 --assignment 456 --section 789 --out submissions --confirm

Required output:

submissions/
  manifest.json
  manifest.ndjson
  assignment-456/
    user-name_111/
      submission-222_original.pdf

Manifest should include:

• course_id
• assignment_id
• user_id
• submission_id
• attempt
• submitted_at
• late/missing/excused flags if available
• file_id
• original filename
• local path
• download status
• error if failed

Grading

canvas grade set --course 123 --assignment 456 --user 111 --score 95 --dry-run
canvas grade set --course 123 --assignment 456 --user 111 --score 95 --confirm
canvas grade comment --course 123 --assignment 456 --user 111 --comment "Excellent analysis" --dry-run
canvas grade import --course 123 --assignment 456 --csv grades.csv --dry-run
canvas grade import --course 123 --assignment 456 --csv grades.csv --confirm

Grade import CSV columns:

user_id,score,comment
111,95,"Good work"

Rubric assessment is available via canvas grade rubric.

Announcements and discussions

canvas announcements create --course 123 --title "Update" --body-file body.md --dry-run
canvas discussions create --course 123 --title "Week 4" --body-file prompt.md --dry-run

Course content edits

canvas pages update --course 123 PAGE_URL --body-file page.html --dry-run
canvas modules publish --course 123 MODULE_ID --dry-run
canvas modules unpublish --course 123 MODULE_ID --dry-run
canvas files upload --course 123 --file syllabus.pdf --dry-run

These commands show a payload summary before mutation.