What Course++ can and can't see

What it cannot read

Course++ refuses these before it even builds a request. Not "we choose not to" — the request is never made.

• Grades and the gradebook
• Student submissions and quiz responses
• Your roster — who is enrolled, their names, their email addresses
• Discussion replies your students wrote
• Course analytics and per-student statistics
• Your Canvas inbox — the messages in it, and the replies people send you

63 address patterns. Reading any of them is refused, every time.

It can send a Canvas message when you ask — to a whole class, or to one group in it, such as just the students. You see who it goes to and the exact message before anything is sent, and nothing goes until you confirm. Course++ names the group by the course, so it never sees who is in it. It cannot message one named person, and it never reads your inbox or the replies.

What it does read

The content you create and manage:

• Pages, assignments and quizzes
• Modules and their items
• Discussion topics — the prompt you wrote, never the replies
• Files, the syllabus, and course settings

Three more things worth knowing

It never sees your Canvas password or an API token. Course++ works through the Canvas session already open in your browser. There is nothing to generate, paste or store. (Your school may still have rules about extensions and AI tools; see below.)

It does not grade. Course++ builds course content. It makes no judgment about student work — it cannot read student work in the first place.

Personal data is stripped from everything it reads. Course content can legitimately contain someone's email address or phone number — a TA's contact details in a syllabus, say. Course++ removes those before anything is sent to the AI. This runs on everything, every time, and nothing in the product can turn it off.

It is a pattern filter, not a mind reader. It cannot recognise a person's name written in an ordinary sentence.

The one thing you control, and should think about

Course++ lets you attach a file — a chapter PDF, a scanned handout, a photo of a whiteboard — so it can build from your own material.

Whatever you attach goes to the AI model. To read it, Course++ sends the file itself to the AI, as it is. Email addresses, phone numbers and ID numbers are then taken out of the text read from it before your request uses that text, but the file was already sent whole. The address blocking above protects what Course++ fetches from Canvas. It cannot look inside a file you hand it.

So: don't attach student work, grades, or a roster export. We say this at the moment you attach something, and we are saying it again here.

A note on FERPA

We are often asked whether Course++ is "FERPA compliant."

Course++ is designed to help you stay FERPA compliant. FERPA's obligations sit with schools, and Course++ is built to help schools and teachers meet them. There is no official FERPA certification for software, so we do not claim one.

Here is how it helps: Course++ is built to refuse requests for student work, grades and rosters, before they are sent. The rest of this page says precisely what it touches.

Here is your part: what you type goes to the AI provider to be processed, exactly as you wrote it, the same as a file you attach. The personal-data stripping above runs on what Course++ reads from Canvas, not on what you type. So don't type student names or other details about a student into a request. And if your school has policies about AI tools, please follow them. We cannot know what your school allows.

How it connects to Canvas, and checking with your school

Course++ is a browser extension. It runs inside the Canvas page you already have open and works through the sign-in your browser already has, the same way Canvas's own pages do. It never sees your Canvas password, there is no key or token to set up, and your Canvas sign-in is never sent to us or to the AI. Because it acts as you, Canvas checks your permissions on every request: Course++ can never do more than you could do yourself, and it is built to do less. It refuses student records (the list above). It changes only courses you teach, and only when you ask. From one course it works in that course; from the Dashboard, in the courses you pick. It asks you first before it deletes anything, and an Inbox message is sent only after you OK it. When you open it, it reads a little from Canvas (your course list, whether you can edit this course); nothing goes to the AI until you send a request. Whatever it changes shows up in Canvas as changed by you, because it was.

Check your school's rules. Many schools have policies on browser extensions and AI tools, and some keep a list of approved ones. Course++ is sold to you personally. It is not made or endorsed by Instructure or by your school, and neither has approved it. We can't tell you what your school allows, and using Course++ doesn't replace its permission. If you're unsure, ask your IT or teaching-and-learning office. The note below is written so you can forward it.

Note a teacher can forward to IT

I'd like to use Course++ (courseplusplus.com), a Chrome extension that helps instructors build Canvas course content with AI. Here is how it works, according to its published documentation. It runs only on our instructure.com pages, inside my own signed-in browser session, and calls the Canvas REST API as me, so Canvas enforces my existing permissions. It uses no developer key, OAuth app, personal access token or LTI install, it never handles my password, and it does not send Canvas cookies or tokens to its own server. It is built to refuse grades, submissions, rosters, enrolments, discussion replies, analytics and reading the inbox (63 blocked API patterns, refused before a request is made). It strips emails, phone numbers and ID numbers from the course content it reads. It changes only courses I teach, and only when I ask: from one course, that course; from the Dashboard, the courses I pick. It confirms deletions, course-level changes and Inbox sends first. Course content and my requests are sent through its server to an AI model. See its privacy policy for the AI providers and their retention terms. Details: courseplusplus.com/what-it-can-see and /privacy-policy. Could you tell me whether this is allowed under our policies on browser extensions and AI tools, or what review it would need?

Questions

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CoursePlusPlus LLC

Course++ is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Instructure, Inc. Canvas is a trademark of Instructure, Inc.