Canvas FAQ

Courses in Canvas are automatically created based off of the Registrar's data.  Courses for the next semester are created well before the semester begins but are not available to students until the instructor publishes the course.

You have a few options:

• • 1. If it is currently an active course, you can add instructors via the People area of your course.  These would be the same steps for adding other roles like Librarian and Observer.

    2. If this is not an active course, you can export your course and send it to them to import into their own course.

One of the nice things about Canvas is that you can import content from another Canvas course when you want to use or re-purpose previously created content including course settings, syllabus, assignments, modules, files, pages, and discussions.  You can also choose to import an entire course or just parts of a course.  You also have the ability to import and adjust events and due dates.

• How do I import a Canvas course?

• How do I import courses from semester to semester without announcements or Zoom links?

→ One important thing to note, you must be an instructor for both the course you are importing to and from.

Credit courses in Canvas come and go from your dashboard but your courses are never really gone. Your dashboard only shows your active and upcoming courses, past courses can always be found by going to courses → all courses.

So how and why does all this happen automatically? What happens when a course 'goes away'?   Read more in this blog post. 

By default, a new Canvas course is ‘Unpublished’, or not available to the students, until the instructor ‘Publishes’ the course.  Once it is published the students will then be able to see the course they are enrolled in.  To learn more about publishing your course, click here.

Within a course, individual items can also be published or unpublished, hence giving the instructor control over when the students are able to access content and assignments. One example of this is in the Modules area.

It is helpful to check to see what your students can see by toggling your course into Student View.

Another reason a student might not be able to see your course is because the course isn't on their dashboard view, so it is 'out of sight, out of mind.'  This is mostly easily remedied by having the student go to COURSES → ALL COURSES and click the star next to the course they are missing.  This will then add it to their dashboard.  More information on viewing courses as a student.