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This document explains the options that admins and instructors have to manage the privacy and visibility of their courses.
Admins and instructors have several options when customizing the privacy and visibility of their courses and content. In Course Navigation, click the Settings link to access Course Details and view course and course content visibility options.
Note: Visibility settings can only be managed by users that have the Courses - change visibility permission enabled.
When visibility options are selected, users have varied views of course content. Not all features are enabled at the course level by instructors and may not be visible to users.
Advantages to Public Courses
Public Course Index: As part of visibility options, any course can be added to the Public Course Index. All courses can be accessed via a link to the URL, though most commonly, Institution and Public courses are generally added to the Public Course Index for easier access to all users at your institution. For more information about the Public Course Index, please refer to the Canvas Guides.
In addition to customizing the course visibility, content can also be customized. Customization options are the same as course options mentioned above, except the options relate to content visibility:
Currently, features that are available for content customization include:
Content visibility options can only be customized at an equal or greater level than course visibility. For instance, if course visibility is set to Course, content customization options include Course, Institution, or Public. But if course visibility is set to Public, the entire course is already public so the Syllabus and Files can only be set to Public.
The following table shows the functionality and limitations of each visibility option when set as course visibility.
Feature |
Course Visibility |
Institution Visibility |
Public Visibility |
Home |
✔️ Can view Course Activity Stream. |
✔️ Cannot view Course Activity Stream. |
✔️ Cannot view Course Activity Stream. |
Announcements |
✔️ |
✖️ Possible workarounds: Use Pages or Modules for posting announcements. |
✖️ Possible workarounds: Use Pages or Modules for posting announcements. |
Assignments |
✔️ Can submit assignments. |
✔️ Cannot submit assignments. |
✔️ Cannot submit assignments. |
Calendar |
✔️ When available, can view Scheduler events. |
✖️ |
✖️ |
Collaborations |
✔️ | ✖️ | ✖️ |
Conferences |
✔️ |
✔️ |
✖️ |
Discussions |
✔️ Can access graded discussions in Modules. Can access links added via the Rich Content Editor. Can access ungraded discussions. |
✔️
Cannot access ungraded discussions. |
✔️ Cannot access graded discussions in Modules. Cannot access links added via the Rich Content Editor. Cannot access ungraded discussions. |
Files |
✔️ If File Access settings are set to “Course,” files uploaded to the course will only be viewable by users actively enrolled in the course |
✔️ If file access settings are set to “Institution,” files uploaded to the course will only be viewable by users actively enrolled in the institution. |
✔️ If file access settings are set to “public,” files uploaded to the course will be viewable by any user. |
Grades |
✔️ | ✖️ | ✖️ |
Modules |
✔️ | ✔️ |
✔️ |
Outcomes |
✔️ | ✖️ | ✖️ |
Pages |
✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ |
People |
✔️ | ✖️ | ✖️ |
Quizzes |
✔️ Any quiz/survey (graded or ungraded) can be taken. Questions for a quiz/survey (graded or ungraded) are visible. Quizzes/surveys can be taken (graded or ungraded). |
✔️ Any quiz/survey (graded or ungraded) cannot be taken. Questions for a quiz/survey (graded or ungraded) are not visible. Quizzes/surveys cannot be taken (graded or ungraded). |
✔️ Any graded quiz/survey cannot be taken. Questions for a graded quiz/survey are not visible. Questions for practice/ungraded quizzes and surveys are visible. Practice/ungraded quizzes and surveys can be taken in public courses. Responses are anonymous to the instructor. |
Syllabus |
✔️ |
✔️ |
✔️ Cannot view event details, location, and address. |
Last update: 2024-11-07
This resource can also be accessed from the following Canvas Guides:
Note: You can only embed guides in Canvas courses. Embedding on other sites is not supported.
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