Upon creation, all Canvas courses will remain unpublished until the instructor manually publishes them. Once you have finished building your course, you will need to publish it before any students may access it.
Please note that once courses are published, they CANNOT be unpublished. Although you may add new content to your course, students will still have access to the course unless you hide or delete the course. We will go over this in the last part of the tutorial.
Publishing a Course
- After you are logged into Canvas, go to the course you would like to publish. Upon selecting the course, you should be brought to its Home page.
- Once at the home page, click the button that reads Course Setup Checklist in the upper right corner of the screen.
- This will cause a menu to appear at the bottom of the screen. The last item on this menu will be Publish Course. Click this, then confirm by clicking Publish Course again in the box that appears to the right.
- Upon clicking, your course will be published and a message of success will appear at the top of the screen.
Hiding a Course
If you would like to hide a course from your students, but do not want to end the course, you can do the following:
- From your course home page, click the Settings tab at the bottom of the course menu. Under the Course Details tab, click the button that says Edit Course Details.
- When you click the edit button, a start and end date will appear. Choose the date(s) you'd like your course to be available.
- Also, check the box next to Users can only participate in the course between these dates.
- To update and save your modifications, click the Update Course Details button at the bottom of the menu.
- Your course will now be available to students only after/between the date(s) specified.
Ending/Deleting a Course
Ending your course will make the course unavailable for participation, but students and instructors will still be able to view it.
Deleting a course will permanently delete it, so it is important to be absolutely sure you would like to do this.
- From your course home page, click the settings tab at the bottom of the course menu.
- Once in settings, there will be options for both deleting or ending the course on the menu on the right side of the page. Click whichever one to end or delete your course.
