Show Unpublished Courses On Student Dashboard By Default

[jrgrochowski]

When professors publish at different times, students may see some of their courses but not all. They may then wonder if they've been dropped from a course and email Student Services, the professor, etc.

They should be able to see their unpublished courses, without having to dig through the difficult to find "all courses" link.

Canvas administrators should have the ability to have unpublished courses appear on a student's dashboard by default. It would prevent some worry for students, and a not insignificant amount of correspondence between students, Student Services, professors, and IT/Canvas Admin.

[KristinL]

Hi @jrgrochowski - Thanks for taking the time to share this idea. It is Open for Conversation.

When reviewing your contribution, I found a related idea -- Show Published/Unpublished Status which helped influence an update for instructors a couple of years ago. I'm linking in case there are similarities between the conversations in the future.

[jmiller872]

Thank you, @jrgrochowski. This would be very helpful! In our district, courses publish on the first day of classes. Many students are distressed when they can't find course shells on their Canvas dashboards in advance of the start date. But, it would also be important that students not be able to access any published content within the unpublished courses before the intended date. 

[kking7]

This would be incredibly helpful!  We see a lot of confusion for students around this as well, because students don't always understand that the registration system is different than the learning management system (Canvas) - and panic when their courses don't appear on their Canvas Dashboard.  

It would be great if students could just see the courses existed (greyed out or however) on their Dashboard without needing instructors to publish before the start of a term.  In a perfect world, the dashboard for instructors that is split between Published/Unpublished courses could be split between Current Courses/Upcoming Courses or some other clear language for students.

Thanks for suggesting this @jrgrochowski! 

[cmillion435]

Thank you @jrgrochowski for starting this conversation.  In addition to what previous posters have said, enabling "coming soon" courses to be greyed out or having a "will be available on [insert date here]" label would save college personnel loads of time in assuaging student concerns that they are not really registered or experiencing a technical glitch. 

[rrobison468]

This would help clear up much confusion by students who worry (and contact the IT Help Desk or Canvas Help) when they cannot find their course shells on their dashboards before classes begin. 

Having a "Published or Unpublished" status and "Current Courses or Upcoming Courses (for late start courses" would relieve much student stress.

[mkollman]

I agree as this is a common request that we have at our institution to show both Published and Unpublished on the dashboard in the same manner as instructor role would solve a lot of questions and confusion by our students.  Having the start date from the institutional system or additional course information would be nice but just the two lists would be an easy win for most of us.