Tips for the First Day of Canvas Courses

Here are some important facts to know about student access to your course.

Course Starts/Ends Date Guide

View more about these settings on the Canvas Guide https://community.canvaslms.com/docs/DOC-1932

Start/End Dates and Publishing Your Course

PUBLISH/UNPUBLISH: (In Moodle this setting was Visible: Show or Hide).  You must publish your course for students to access it.  If it is unpublished, students will not be able to access your course.

STARTS/ENDS DATES: Start and end dates control when students have access to published courses in Canvas. When courses are created, their start and end dates default to the term dates the course is created in.  FaCIT/IS staff have set term dates to coincide with the Sauk Academic Calendar. The start date is set for the first day of the semester.  The end date is set for the last day of Finals Week.

When to Publish

You can publish your course at any time.  Students will not be able to access your course until the the dates set by the term, which is the first day of the semester.

Allow Early Student Access

If you want students to begin participating in your course before the start of the semester, you must both publish the course and manually change the start date for the course in the course settings.  You MUST click the box so that “Users can only participate in the course between these dates.”

Access these settings in the Course>Settings menu.