Publishing Course Content

Owned by Karen Park
Last updated: Nov 29, 2021 by Former user (Deleted)
2 min read

Table of Contents

Overview

It is important for Professors to stay on top of the content they are willing to share with students in their courses. Many find it helpful to know how to make everything available to their students at once while others prefer making individual content visible at different times. Canvas offers both of these options as well as a third option of publishing assignments but locking them until a specific date. Below we will show how to make each of these options possible.

Publishing the Entire Course 

If you choose to publish your course before the term has officially started, you will need to modify your Course Start and End Dates to allow students access early or extend past the default term end date.

  1. Go to the course homepage.

  2. In the right-hand sidebar (this may display at the bottom of the screen if your screen resolution is small), find the Course Status toggle. Click the "Publish" option to publish the course.

    Course status toggle allows you to choose between publish or unpublish

Publishing Modules and Specific Course Content 

If you've added your content to Modules, you will also need to make sure you publish both the item and the module it is contained within. Published content in an unpublished module will not be visible to students.

Sometimes instructors do not wish to make all the content in a course available at once. In addition to publishing content as a method of controlling course content access, module groups can also be locked and automatically opened to students on specific dates or locked until a pre-requisite module is completed. Learn more about setting up Modules on Canvas.

 To make certain assignments, modules, etc. available and keep the rest of the content hidden:

  1. Go to the content page (Assignments, modules, etc).
  2. Click on the "Publish" cloud located towards the right side of the screen. (This gray cloud should turn green).

Module View:

Published content will display a cloud icon with an upward facing arrow. Unpublished content will have a cloud icon with an arrow with a slash through it. Hover over these icons and text will appear to indicate publishing status

Assignment View:

Assignment view screen


Additional Resources