Preview and share before "Not available until" date

[Andreas_Hopf]

I need to share pages and assignments with fellow educators to discuss design, layout, etc. When I publish a course, because of the "Not available until" date, which is in September, nothing shows in assignments.

Because of the "Not available until" date of assignments, I can't take screenshots or Zoom share "as if a student was viewing".

Is there an easy way to override the date temporarily? Otherwise, I presume I would have to change the availability date to, say, today, for over 100 assignments of 8 courses, and then change them all back. That would be very tedious.

[Andreas_Hopf]

Or, where can I simply export the course with its modules, pages and assignment as a PDF?

[BrianLester]

You can export the course as an epub (like an e book) but that won't provide immediate visibility for files...

[Andreas_Hopf]

Thanks, I published the course prematurely, exported as ePub, opened the download in Apple Books, but that layout does not look at all how I designed it in Canvas, also the typography is a zoo of wonders.

Isn't there a simple option to export a course with its pages and assignments as a PDF?

[BrianLester]

Would this warrant using a blueprint course which could be visible to and discussed by faculty (blueprint courses have no students)

A date shift using bulk edit for assignments (with a specified no of days offset) would make it easy to set real dates before publishing blueprint content to live child courses.

[Andreas_Hopf]

Problem is that each course (design education) looks very different, so there's no blueprint.

Regarding checking the student view regarding content, layout, typography, colours, etc., I suppose I have to go into each assignment, roll the availability date forward to today, view and take screenshots I can email, and then change the dates back to what they were.

In any good old WordPress backend site, you can just view things "as if" and export a PDF.

[Andreas_Hopf]

Bump.

If it is, bizarrely, impossible to export a PDF of a course, modules or assignments - is there a way to provide other educators some kind of Canvas access to all the courses I am designing for them? I have to finish the design soon, so all others can start using the courses in spring 2025. Working with masses of screenshots is terribly tedious.

[chriscas]

Hi @Andreas_Hopf,

When someone is developing template/design-type content, we'd usually have that done in a sandbox-type course site without any course dates attached and using the default semester which should have no dates either..  Even with dates attached, faculty should generally be able to access the course ahead of time to see your design, unless someone set up your term dates to allow designers earlier access than teachers.

You've mentioned student access a couple times too, so are you trying to add the future teachers to your course as students?  That's something you may want to do differently too depending on your anticipated workflows.  If you want teachers to be able to take your design and import it into their courses, they would need teacher access to your course for that.  Perhaps you plan on doing that step for them, though.  I'm not clear on what kind of access you have yourself, so I wanted to bring this up as well.

Hope this helps!

-Chris

[Andreas_Hopf]

Thanks, it's not a sandbox course or a template, but a whole bunch of very different courses that work differently and look differently and use different tutors, not only faculty. This task got dumped on me as a Canvas novice with zero information/education. Trouble is we're using external tutors that aren't allowed to view our Canvas stuff, but I need to fill the modules with their content and design it so it looks good (artistic university education). I'm just designing the content using graphics software and HTML ; )

All I want is to output the pages and assignments as a PDF for each course (the way the students would see it), so I can share it; just like exporting any WordPress or other CMS type content.

[Andreas_Hopf · Accepted solution]

Printing a course, module, page or assignment to a PDF is a workable solution. It does not look quite like the student view, but at least interactivity within a page or assignment, as well as all external links, are both preserved, and anyone can view and mark up the design suggestion in detail in Adobe Acrobat.