What the Class Sees When They Open Your Room

Correction, Oct 26, 2026

This guide calls “See Other Users’ Cursors” the third setting on a rank. It is a rank setting, but it sits lower in the list, between Manage Members and Send Chat Messages.

The question comes up every time a teacher sets up a new room: can students see each other on the class chart, or only the teacher?

The answer sits in a single row of the rank settings, and it shapes the whole feel of the session.

Do Students See Other Students on a Shared Class Chart?

A Traderise room is a shared chart. Everyone in it draws on the same one. Cursors carry names. Drawings sync as they are made and moved, and the chat and voice live in the same room as the chart.

Whether students see each other — or only the teacher — depends on how you configure a rank before they join.

Can Students See Each Other on the Class Chart? The Row That Controls It

The third row in a rank's settings is called See Other Users' Cursors. That is the switch. Turn it on and the students holding that rank see the whole room: every cursor and every name. Turn it off and they see only the teacher's cursor; the rest of the class disappears from their view.

This is the direct answer to the visibility question, and it is worth stating plainly: the row is not about drawings or rights. It controls specifically whether a student sees the other people in the room. Drawings are a separate matter, governed by a different set of rows.

Because visibility is a rank setting rather than a per-person toggle, you apply it once and it covers everyone holding that rank. No roster to work through, no individual switches to flip.

Is This a Per-Student Setting or a Room-Wide Rank Setting?

It is a rank setting, and that distinction matters at any class size.

Drawing rights follow the same logic. Add/Remove Drawings governs whether a rank can place new shapes on the room chart. Edit Drawings governs whether they can reposition existing ones. Turn either off for a rank and it applies to every student holding it.

A rank can be changed while the room is open. If you start a session with drawing rights open and want to tighten things up before a review, you can pull them back mid-session without clearing the room.

Build the rank once, adjust it as the course evolves, and the room reflects it.

What Does a Student Actually See When They Open the Class Chart?

When a student joins, they open the room chart and see what their rank permits.

If See Other Users' Cursors is on, they see named cursors for everyone in the room, including other students. As classmates draw or annotate, those changes appear in real time. Chat and voice sit alongside the chart in the same room, so the conversation and the markup happen in the same place.

If See Other Users' Cursors is off, they see the chart and the teacher's cursor. Other students are not visible to them on the chart. They still share the same underlying canvas, so any drawings placed by users with drawing rights appear for everyone, but the sense of a crowd working together is absent.

Seats are counted on the room you host, not on the rooms your students join, so the room your class answers back in carries no per-head fee for the people sitting in it.

How Do I Set Up a Workshop or a Lecture?

The distinction maps directly to the visibility row.

A workshop — where students annotate and see each other building on the same chart — needs See Other Users' Cursors turned on and drawing rights open for that rank. Everyone can see who is doing what, and the chart fills with the room's collective markup.

A lecture, where you draw and the students watch, turns the visibility row off and pulls back drawing rights. Students see your work and hear your reasoning. The chart stays clean because you control what goes on it, and students are not pulled in different directions by a dozen cursors moving at once.

The visibility setting is not cosmetic. It sets the dynamic of the room. A room where students can see each other tends to generate more annotation, more chat, more back-and-forth. A room where they cannot is quieter, more focused on what the teacher is laying out.

Neither is wrong. They suit different lessons, different class sizes, and different points in a course.

For plan details and what each tier covers, see Traderise pricing and plans.