Many instructors invite guest lecturers or students to participate in their courses. In most cases, this is a straightforward affair: the faculty member simply accesses the course management system's control panel and adds the guest's UNI (Columbia University Network ID) to the roster with the appropriate role. This article describes how to give an academic guest access to a CourseWorks or Sakai course site if that guest does not have a pre-existing UNI.

An instructor seeking to add an academic guest must ask their departmental administrator to add the guest to the Delegated Identity Administration (DIA) feed. The information required to set up the new UNI includes a accurate date of birth (DOB). Do not provide a social security number (SSN) when requesting a UNI via DIA.

The request to the departmental administrator should specify that the guest needs a UNI with email privileges. Since there is no "academic guest" role within the UNI system, the "contractor" role should be selected. If the guest has an existing UNI without email privileges, then the "contractor" role must be assigned to the UNI. The "contractor" role does not grant access to restricted library materials, but it does create a real email address, which is a pre-requisite for CourseWorks access.

Once the UNI has been activated, it should be accessible in CourseWorks and Sakai shortly thereafter.