During the first week of classes, it’s normal to see a lot of movement—students adding and dropping courses as they finalize their schedules. As this happens, you may notice a mismatch between your student rosters in Canvas and those in Banner, Siena’s official system of record.
This note is meant to give you a look behind the scenes at how—and when—dropped students are removed from your Canvas courses.
Why Banner and Canvas Don’t Always Match
At Siena, Banner is the authoritative system for all student records—registrations, grades, transcripts, and more. Canvas, our Learning Management System (LMS), supports the teaching and learning experience, but it is not the official source for enrollment data.
There are automated processes in place that sync Banner registration data with Canvas. These run six times a day, and they do a good job of pushing new enrollments into Canvas. So when a student registers for a course in Banner, they’re usually added to your Canvas roster within a few hours.
But—and here’s the key—Canvas does not automatically remove students who drop a course in Banner. That part is not automated due to technical constraints and academic considerations.
What We Do (Manually) to Keep Canvas Updated
To fill that gap, Academic Technology runs a manual drop process every morning, starting on the first day of classes through the day after the add/drop period ends.
Here’s how it works:
- We generate a difference report by comparing the Canvas enrollment list against the current Banner registration data.
- Students who appear in Canvas but are no longer registered in Banner are flagged.
- We then batch delete those students from the corresponding Canvas courses.
This helps keep Canvas rosters reasonably up-to-date throughout the add/drop period.
Just this morning, the difference list included nearly 600 entries, which is typical. The number tends to shrink each day until the add/drop period closes.
What This Means for Faculty
- Roster changes are normal during the first week. If a dropped student is still showing up in Canvas, give it a day—it’s likely they’ll be removed in the next manual update.
- If you’ve manually added someone to your course in a student role—whether it’s a student or a faculty colleague—they may be removed during the manual drop process if they’re not listed in Banner. If you’d like someone to remain in your course despite not being officially enrolled, please email Shou-Bang Jian, and I’ll add them to our exception list.