What happens when I hit publish?

[VBPDX]

This is a noob question but I have read 30 posts and different guides and I am not seeing a direct answer. 

For context, I am a grad student in an instructional design program (I just started). I am working on a mock up in Canvas and it seems that I need to "Publish" my course to be able to get it to do what I need but I do not what my content available to anyone or visible in Commons since it is a school project and not for the public.

I am using a Free for Teachers account. I read that the Sandbox option is not available for this type of account. I just need to be able to turn in screenshots of what looks like a functioning LMS for this assignment. In the future I will be creating an actual course for my capstone, but I am not sure yet that I will use Canvas for that. I have used Canvas as a student and I have created course material in a shell for an grant-funded project but I was not responsibly for any of the publishing settings, only content. 

If I have no students, I currently have the copyright set to Private, I have not checked the "Include this course in the public course index". 

Will anyone be able to see my course or content if I publish the course? Thanks! 

[ColtonSwapp · Accepted solution]

Hello @VBPDX 

Thanks for posting this in the global Canvas community! Welcome aboard! 

It appears you have a question about the visibility of your mock up course in the Canvas free for teacher instance. I would love to try and help you with this! 

• For context, the publishing status impacts users who have been added to the course. This impacts the Student role mainly. If you have a user with a Teacher or TA role, they can see exactly what you see in the course and the publishing status does not impact them for the most part. They can see your unpublished resources as you do, mainly because of their role in the course and the permissions they have with that role. 
• Anyone who is has not been physically added to the course will not have the ability to look at your mock up course. 
• You mentioned Commons and I wanted to touch on that a bit. When you share content to Commons, you do have the ability to control the sharing options. The sharing options control who can View and Use the resource you are sharing over there. If you don't want your content you have share to Commons to be usable or visible to other users, be sure to select the option for "Only Me" in the sharing option. 

Hopefully this helps you out! Let us know if you have any questions! 

-Colton