Looking for Info on Concluding Courses

[kmay]

I am doing some research on the best options for limiting access to courses at the end of the term for both faculty and students. Right now we are using course end dates that are set 2 weeks after the actual term and course end dates in our SIS. With Academic Services wanting grades in the SIS as soon as possible after they are due, that 2 week time frame is causing some monumental headaches. We pull, faculty still have access and make changes, we pull again, and round and round.

At the same time, students need to be able to see grades and submissions after the course ends in case of grade disputes. So we are looking at setting the course end dates for midnight the day grades are due from faculty and clearing the check box for the "Restrict student access after the course end date" setting for our main account. Our hope is that faculty will have the opportunity to enter the grades, we will be able to pull grades the day after the course end date, and students and faculty will be able to view the course for as long as they need.

Hunting around on the community, I have found a few different things about what it means to conclude a course. It is clear that the intention is that the course becomes view only for faculty and students. Faculty can't change grades and students cant interact with discussion and assignment items. I also saw a couple of items here that indicate that a concluded course does still allow some interaction with integration items and that faculty have some problems accessing items they have incorporated into the course.

For discussion: what have you found to be the benefits and pitfalls of concluding courses and allowing student access after? What have you seen in your environments that might cause you to go a different route? What have you chosen, settings wise, for your end of term? And finally, what really happens when a course is concluded, are there artifacts that students can access that they shouldn't, do faculty have problems accessing things that they should? Final question, if students have access to view after a course is concluded, how does that impact activity logging for reporting purposes?

[gharbor]

I am looking at the same thing and not having much help from Canvas.. they told me to post in this group, but it appears that you have not had much help for a month or so!

I need to make sure that our Diff Sync does not remove the enrolments from semester 1 courses because we still want to be able to see the marks and submission data. 

I'm hoping that by manually giving some of these courses a Term End date that this will exclude these courses from the Diff Sync, but I'm not sure if this happens automatically?

Anyone in this space know about this?

[MattHanes]

If you change your Diff ID then you won't remove anything from the previous data set. We actually send up multiple batches with different diff IDs for different terms. They only diff against the ones with the same identifier. You use the SIS CSV imports to set a Term (How do I add a new term in an account?) for each course.

You can change the Term dates (How do term dates, course dates, and section dates work in Canvas?) for every course with that Term ID simply by changing the term start and end dates. Then they apply to all of the courses with that Term ID associated with them. I have never tested it by setting end dates on individual courses, but I don't believe it would make a difference as far as the diffing mode goes. If the records are missing, then Canvas marks that as a deletion according to the API Documentation:

If user B is created by import 1, and then user B is omitted from import 2, Canvas will mark the user as deleted.

[MattHanes]

This is from the point of view of a K12 environment:

1. What have you found to be the benefits and pitfalls of concluding courses and allowing student access after?
    We don't allow students access after the course over. It helps our students to only be able to see their currently active courses in their course list. They tend to be overwhelmed by the number of courses they are in.
2. What have you seen in your environments that might cause you to go a different route?
   Nothing so far, we are content and have received no student complaints that have made their way to me as the LMS administrator. 
   
3. What have you chosen, settings wise, for your end of term?
   We allow teachers access to their previous term courses until the start of the next school year. Then we allow them to continue to have the read-only access so they can refer back to their courses. This cleans up their course list and puts old courses into a "Past Enrollments" section on the their course screens.
   For students, we don't allow them any access after the term ends.
4. And finally, what really happens when a course is concluded, are there artifacts that students can access that they shouldn't, do faculty have problems accessing things that they should?
   After the course is concluded, it is put into a read-only state for the faculty members and moved into the "Past Enrollments" section on their courses screen. It does the same thing for students unless you have checked the box to "restrict student access after the course end date". Faculty can access everything but can't edit or create new content in those courses.
5. Final question, if students have access to view after a course is concluded, how does that impact activity logging for reporting purposes?
   I don't know the exact answer to this question but my best guess is that activity logging continues after the end date. 

Hope that helps!

[kmeeusen]

Wow  @MattHanes  , I am in higher ed, and was getting ready to provide almost the exact same response. K12 and HE are not all that dissimilar.

I will add a few things we do differently:

• We set both student and faculty access dates for each term.
• Faculty get access apx. 30 days prior to term start to permit course-building time.
• Students get access on the date the term opens, because faculty can manually open their courses earlier if they desire. I also teach for a college with a mandatory week zero, and students have access then.
• We set faculty access end date to be 1 year after the end of term.We do not conclude the courses. With shorter Summer terms, our faculty often use past Summer shells for the next Summer course, so they need access to copy - you cannot copy from a concluded course.
• We end student access five days after end of term. We always "restrict student access after the course end date".

We also fiddle with specialty terms for things like several 30-day CE courses, and a few other shorter-than-term courses we offer.

Kelley

[MattHanes]

Hey  @kmeeusen , I think you can copy from a course that is concluded by term dates. Several of my teachers did that this year. When they received their new course shells, they imported from the old ones which were concluded the prior day. I haven't tested importing from a manually concluded course though. 

[kmeeusen]

Hi  @MattHanes 

Yep, should have been clearer - yes for term-date concluded, no for manually concluded.

Thanks for chiming in, Matt.

Kelley

[myerdon01]

I have also been trying to figure out the best way to do this. Right now we have just completed our 4th full year of using Canvas and many instructor's course lists are getting unmanageable. We have term dates set, usually the term is set to end the day after final term grades are due. Does a term date "conclude" a course, unpublish it, or restrict students access to it? Right now, all of our courses are imported via SIS with these course settings:

But, does this configuration allow access to the course forever because the end date is blank and the "Users can only participate..." box is checked? If we want access only to the end of the term, should we leave it unchecked?

This was set up by a previous LMS admin and we have no current procedure and faculty can change the end date, etc. I think the best would be that the classes conclude (no student access) at the end of the term, but we would want the faculty to be able to copy from previous courses at least a year out...maybe, I would rather they use a master course or development shell to copy from, not copy over from year to year, we've had some issue with that...but that is a whole other issue!

So, my question to the group is, how would I set up the course settings if I want the following:

1. No student particpation/submissions after finals week ends, unless an incomplete grade is given
2. Allow faculty access to copy courses after the term
3. BUT...we would want the courses to go into the Past Enrollments section after the term so the course list is not so cluttered

There are so many variables including the terms start and end dates, the "Users can only participate..." box, changing term dates by user, etc. Or maybe my brain is not working yet, just getting back in front of my computer after a week in the woods! 

Any help is greatly appreciated!

[crafte]

Hi  @myerdon01 ‌, I just tested a setting as seen in your screenshot above. It seems that a blank course end date combined with the box 'Users can only participate in the course between these dates' checked will result in students never losing access to the course and they will be able to participate past the term as well. In short, the course never closes for students. 

You should only check the box below the end date if you enter a course end date (or if you intend for a course to remain open for students). Leaving the box unchecked, will allow the term dates set at the account level to remain effective. If you want courses to be completely removed from students' list of courses after the term ends, you might want to consider leaving the course access restrictions set ('Restrict students from accessing courses after end date' - this is found on the account settings page).

Check the 'Teacher can access from' settings for each term created at the account level. By default this is set to start 'whenever' and it ends when the term end date has been reached. If you leave the default, instructors would be able to access courses as soon as they have been created in Canvas. Courses would move to the Past Enrollment section after the term ends. If you want your instructors to have access for some time after the term ends, you can do so by entering an end date for the teacher access. 

When the teacher access end date has been reached, the courses are moved to the Past Enrollments. Instructors might need to check 'Include completed courses' when they want to import content from concluded courses.

Hope that helps.  

[myerdon01]

Thank you and this is totally what I thought I should be doing, just wasn't sure why the previous admin decided to leave all courses with open end dates.

[tdelillo]

In my experience, people use blank end dates because they believe that the instructor will lose access to the course otherwise. As  @crafte ‌ noted, the course/term/access dates and checkboxes are a complicated stew, but course end dates by themselves do not cut off the teacher's ability to finish grading (their #1 concern) or to copy that course to the next term (their #2 concern).