Show Published/Unpublished Status

[dllewellyn]

Under the Courses tab, we could have a feature that shows the published/unpublished status of a course by a locked or unlocked icon. Students could see a course they are enrolled in, but if it's unpublished it would show up as locked.

Teachers could also see which courses are published and unpublished from the Course tab, so they would be able to keep track of multiple courses. We get a few calls about not being able to access a class a teacher sent out an invitation for.  If a student knew they were in the class, but it's not published yet, they wouldn't have to worry about if a class has started or not. When you click on the lock, it would give you a start date of the course to check back on the status. It could also give the students an idea of when they could go into the course. TA's could also see what courses they could access with a key.

This idea has been developed and deployed to Canvas

For details, please read through the Ready Release Notes (2020-04-25) 

[Stef_retired]

Deactivated user‌, this information already appears on a student's All Courses list, as detailed in How do I view my Canvas courses as a student? . Are you proposing to (1) add this information in the form of a lock/unlock icon on the course card itself; and (2) incorporate text that appears upon mouseover on the course card that indicates a start date? With regard to the second question, who would control the message text and date, and where would it be inputted?

[dllewellyn]

stefaniesanders‌ It seems like a lot of students and teachers access their courses through their Dashboard or courses tab, and are unaware they can see the status through the All courses page. Even a simple lock/unlock icon on a course card would let them know the status from the dashboard page.  As far as the start date, just have the information from the course setting display as to when the course or the term starts so students have a better idea if they should be able to access the course or not and teachers have a better idea when to publish.

[Stef_retired]

Thanks for providing this clarification, Deactivated user‌. To be clear, populating the course start date from the date in course settings does not guarantee that the course has actually been published, and I can envision this causing some consternation.

The idea is open for voting.

[kmeeusen]

Deactivated user‌,

And you just got your first vote! I and my support person spend a lot of time fielding inquiries like yours at the start of every term. I recognize that this change would only lessen the inquiries, but anything that helps, helps!

Agent K

[dllewellyn]

Agreed, maybe there could be additional information on the course card rollover such as:

Term for this course starts on: [Date]

"This course is currently unpublished by your teacher, you can contact them through the inbox tab for updates about when the course will be open/published."

Or something to that effect so that students know that they don't have a responsibility to that class yet.

[tuelj]

I would like to see a syllabus published at least 1 week prior to the course opening up. This would allow time for students to order books, materials, etc.  There is no indication when a course will publish and it’s frustrating using the “wait and see” approach to determine what’s needed for class. 

[cms_hickss]

I am about to forward this Idea to the rest of my Support Team. This is an issue they have to address every semester. It is surprisingly a large amount of their call volume.

So much so, that this semester we ran a Global Announcement trying to address the issue and send students to the "All Courses" screen just to see if the course had been published and to explain what it meant should the course appeared under “Future Enrollments”.

[elisabeth_green]

As head of the aftorementioned support team, 3 out of every 4 calls at the start of term is determining course availability, resulting in hundreds if not thousands of calls during the first week of the semester (UCF has an enrollment of 66k+ students, most of whom prove course participation for federal financial aid through online course content). This suggested change would be incredibly welcome!

[RobDitto]

 @tuelj ‌, I agree. We have the same issue at our institution.

Consider voting on this other idea which more closely resembles what you envision for students accessing an advance syllabus before a course is published:

• https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/9889-allow-students-to-see-syllabus-for-future-enrollments 

[meichin]

The majority of our student calls and emails are about course access the first week of the semester.  I think more information on the dashboard would cut this down. Susan Hicks' Blog - Thank you Susan for alerting me that global notifications don't show up on the mobile apps.  No wonder why we get so many calls after we post a similar announcement.