Access to Course through Catalog Dashboard.

[sbarry2]

Here is a question I have asked in the past Access to Course through Catalog Dashboard. 

Our students register through Catalog. The course may not start for another two weeks. We want the students to have access to the course prior to the start. 

Catalog does NOT recognize "Restrict students from viewing course before start date" check box in Canvas. Therefore, if students logged into Canvas, they can see the course. This would be fine however....

The email from Catalog drives them to the Catalog dashboard. But, when they arrive, the course is locked because it won't start for 2 weeks. -

They can access the course by going to their name and clicking Canvas under there. However, we are finding this is not intuitive to users. 

Any advice?

[jsowalsk]

Maybe send them an email regarding that the course starts at a specific time. Also, update the email with the HTML code in the admin portal.

[jguffey]

Hi,

For our courses that have specific start dates, we don't set the 'Restrict students from viewing course before start date" and instead have them go right into a Start Here module.  This can be just a few pages of standard online learning things - polices/procedures, course outline or syllabus, instructor information, etc.  Then the first module is locked until the course opens, but this allows the student a bit of time to click around and get familiar with the system.

Just a thought.

Jill

[jsowalsk]

Everyone just so you are aware in the most recent release notes for Catalog this might help with the restrict issue: https://community.canvaslms.com/docs/DOC-16231-catalog-release-notes-2019-01-29 . Also, you can restrict students are the section level in addition to the course level by selecting the section and updating the dates.