With our previous LMS, our program coordinators had a means to lock down a course until the professor/instructor digitally signed a contract. The instructor would log into the LMS, go to the course they were to teach, and upon clicking the course, would be greeted with a EULA style contract that spelled out the responsibilities of the instructor in teaching the course. Upon agreeing to this contract, the course was opened for them.
Does anybody know of a similar solution for Canvas courses?
The instructor cannot be locked from their own course, because, as the instructor, they can see and control all content. There's no real automatic way of doing this in Canvas alone, you'd have to employ some external tools to do a complicated automation process that would add the instructor to the course once they clicked "Agree" on a different site. This could be accomplished by using a set of scripts to grab a form response and insert a new row into a SIS ID import, or by some other employee tracking a Qualtrics survey, and adding the instructor manually.
Are your instructors teaching the very moment they are hired? Wouldn't they already sign a contract when they are hired? Or are they all volunteers?