Previous Course Access

[Kitte117]

Why can't I seem to view assignments/exams from my previous course, and is there a way to at least download them to view on my own?

[SusanNiemeyer]

Are you a student or an instructor of a Canvas course?

If you are a student, your school has most likely restricted access. I teach at a community college, and my college automatically removes courses from the students' Dashboards at the conclusion of each semester. I would suggest contact your instructors to see if they might send you these materials.

[Kitte117]

I'm a student---and I will try that (as well as make a feature suggestion on here), thank you!

[SusanNiemeyer · Accepted solution]

Hi Kitte117,

The decision to close up past courses is one made by your institution, not by Canvas. Generally, schools consider courses to be linked to a semester or a quarter. As a student, you have access to that course material during that fixed time period.

I always advise my students to save their own work on a Google Doc or a Microsoft Word file. I can imagine how frustrating it would be to write a paper and then lose access to it. If a student asks me to send a copy of their own work after the semester has ended, I will do that.

However, professors have different attitudes about sharing the materials they have created. Just yesterday, I turned down a request from a student to send her all of my course materials from last semester.

Good luck!

[Kitte117]

That's understandable, professors' differing attitudes to sharing what they've created.

In my current case, it's mainly the final exam I was hoping to access (fortunately, I typed up and saved written assignments on my computer before submitting them online, to be safe). I'd been saving copies of the exams during the semester as they'd been graded, in case I wanted to look them over in the future, but forgot to save one for the fully-graded final before the course went away on here.

Thank you!

[SusanNiemeyer]

In this case, I'd ask your professor to send you a copy of your answer(s) for your final exam. I would specify that you're interested in your own work and why you'd like to have a copy of it.

One of the problems nowadays is that the exam questions are being posted all over the Internet. Test security has gone out the window. Your professor will probably not want to send you the exam questions. However, he/she will most likely be willing to send you your own work.