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Canvas - How to Manage Student Access to Your Course
When you’ve prepared your Canvas course modules, activities, and syllabus, and you’re ready for students to access the course, complete two important steps:
Configure Student Access to Your Course
When setting up your Canvas course, decide between the Term and Course “Participation” options for managing student access to your course. The Term option is the default for newly-created Canvas courses. The Course option gives you more control over when and how students can access your course.
Option One: Term-Managed Participation
The Term option will allow students to access your course as soon as you publish it. Students will be able to participate in any open Assignments, Discussions, and Quizzes.
Canvas term start and end dates do not match those on the UW-Superior academic calendar. Canvas terms begin well in advance of the first class session and end a few months after the last session.
Option Two: Course-Managed Participation
If you change the “Participation” dropdown to the Course setting—instead of the default Term option—student participation will be limited to the start and end date you enter in the “Start” and “End” date boxes (located below the “Participation” selector). If you use this Course option, remember to do the following:
- Enter both a “Start” and “End” date. Choose a start date that corresponds with your class schedule and an end date after the end of your Finals period.
- Check either of the “Restrict students from viewing course…” checkboxes, as necessary. [We recommend keeping both of these boxes unchecked.]
Conclude Your Course!
Setting a course End date is helpful both you and your students. Configure an End date soon after the end of the finals period—what Instructure calls concluding your Canvas course—to prevent old course events and assignment due dates from appearing on students' Canvas To Do list or Calendar.
Do you need to grant a specific student extended access to your Canvas course? Don't change the course settings. Instead, use the Extend Student Access tool to configure an extension.
Both of these are important tasks to review or complete at the end of the course.
For more information about managing access to your course by assigning start and end dates, please visit this Canvas Instructor Guide page.
Publish Your Course
When your course is ready, you must publish it, or students won’t be able to access the course and its contents. This is true regardless of how you set the course or section dates, and regardless of whether you publish or unpublish modules, pages, and assignments.
To publish your course, click the Publish button on your course homepage. This button is located in the Course Home Page Sidebar or the Course Settings Sidebar. Please note that on smaller screens, the sidebar may display beneath other page content.
For more information about managing access to your Canvas course using the Publish button, please visit this Canvas Instructor Guide page.
Course Publishing vs Item Publishing
Publishing a course doesn’t automatically publish modules, pages, or assignments in your course. Unpublished items are invisible to students.
Remember to publish items in your course as you finalize them. If you'd like to prevent students from interacting with a module until after a specific date, you can lock modules, instead of leaving them unpublished.