Remember to Publish Your Canvas Site!

Student sitting at a table discussion a book and several documents
It’s almost time to publish Fall 2015 Canvas sites!

What should I do?

The Fall 2015 term at the University of Pennsylvania starts Wednesday, August 26th. Courseware Support recommends that instructors publish their Canvas sites before their first class meeting. Here are instructions for how to publish a Canvas site:

How do I publish my course?

What does “publishing” mean?

Publishing means giving registered students access to your course’s Canvas site. All Canvas sites are made in an “unpublished” state, meaning that only people in the Teacher, TA, or Designer roll can access the sites (the intention is to give these users time to create and edit the site before students see it).  When a site is “unpublished,” you can see registered students using the People button , and students see this message for your site in their “My Courses” list:

"Unpublished" message for a Canvas site.

 

 

When students place their cursor over this message, the see the following explanation:

Message that appears for users when they place their cursor over the "unpublished" message. It reads, "This course has not been published. Students should contact the course instructor for access."

Once published, the site appears in registered students’ Courses tabs, and they can enter the site by clicking on the link for it in the tab.

But what do I do if I don’t want students to see certain things in my site yet?

You can control when students see certain items in a Canvas site through a feature called Draft State. For more information on Draft State, please see:

Working with Draft State

Anything else I should know about before Fall 2015 begins?

For a detailed start-of-term Canvas checklist, please click here. If you have any questions or need help, please email canvas@pobox.upenn.edu or register for Canvas office hours for in-person assistance.

Last Updated: 25 Aug 2015

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