Publishing Courses in Canvas – Educational Technology and Innovation

It is critical that you publish your course(s) in Canvas so students can access them. Publishing your course(s) makes your course content available to students.

Log in to Canvas, and select a course you wish to publish.
- You can also click on Courses >> All Courses to see all of your courses on one screen and which of those are published or not.
From the course Home page, under Course Status, click on 🚫 Unpublished.
Select ✅ Publish from the drop-down list.
- If the course is already published but does not have any student submissions, the Course Status will show Published.
- To unpublish a course, click on ✅ Published, and then select 🚫 Unpublish from the drop-down list.
- If the course is already published and has student submissions, the Course Status indicator will not be visible. Courses that have student submissions cannot be unpublished.

This screenshot of the Canvas LMS interface displays the "Course Status" sidebar menu on the right side of a course page. The current status is indicated as "Unpublished" with a "prohibited" icon. An arrow points to a pop-up menu with the heading "State," where the "Publish" option, marked with a green checkmark, is highlighted. Below this, there are buttons for "Import Existing Content," "Import from Commons," "Choose Home Page," "View Course Stream," "New Announcement," "Course Analytics," and "View Course Notifications". At the bottom, a "Coming Up" section with a "View Calendar" link shows the text "Nothing for the next week".

Alternatively, from the Canvas Dashboard, you can publish courses that are displayed at the bottom of the screen under the Unpublished Courses heading. Click the Publish button to publish a course.

This is a screenshot of a course card on the Canvas LMS Dashboard. The card is for a course titled "(OLD) Faculty Orientation and Tra..." and has a background image of several people collaborating around tables in a modern office or learning space. A dark purple arrow points to a "Publish" button located in the top-left corner of the course card. In the top-right corner, there is a vertical ellipsis icon for more options. At the bottom of the card, there are three icons representing announcements, assignments, and discussions.

Students will be able to see their courses on the Canvas Dashboard once you have published them.

Additional Resources

How do I view all my Canvas courses?

00:07: How do I view all my canvas courses as a student? 00:11: In global navigation, click the courses link. 00:13: Then click the all courses link. 00:17: Courses are organized into all courses past enrollments, future 00:21: enrollments and groups. 00:24: Courses can be sorted by favorite status name nickname 00:28: term enrollment status and publish status by selecting. 00:32: The sort icon in the header groups are sorted alphabetically by 00:36: group name. 00:38: If Allowed by your institution, you can do the institutions public course 00:42: index in a catalog format by clicking the browse more courses button. 00:47: All courses are courses that are part of the current semester or term. 00:50: However, depending on access settings, for a course, 00:54: my course is can also display courses that have not yet started or unpublished. 01:00: Active courses that are available to you are listed in blue text, these 01:04: courses have been published and include a link to the course to open 01:08: a course, click the name of the course. 01:11: Courses that are within the current term dates but are not yet available are listed in Black 01:15: text. These courses have not been published and no link is available. 01:20: You can also view any nicknames you have created for courses. 01:24: Is a course, includes a term date. The term date displays. 01:29: Each course includes your role in the course. 01:31: Your Role can be student teacher, ta Observer 01:35: designer or a custom roll created by your Institution. 01:40: Any all courses section. You can customize the courses list and Mark courses 01:44: as favorites. Favorite courses display in the card view dashboard. 01:50: You can change the order that courses are listed by clicking the sort icon in the header. 01:54: The column currently use for sorting displays either the ascending 01:58: or descending icon to indicate the sort order. 02:02: Courses under the past enrollments heading our courses that have concluded, but are still available 02:06: as a read-only archive course. 02:08: You can do course, material and grades but can no longer participate 02:12: in the course. 02:14: Future enrollments are courses. That will be made available as part of an upcoming term 02:18: or specific course start date. Future courses may be published or 02:22: unpublished. However, some institutions May restrict you from being 02:26: published courses before the start date. 02:28: If a future course, includes a link. 02:31: You can do course content but cannot fully participate in the course until 02:35: the start date. Participation include submitting, assignments and 02:39: replying to discussions. It’s a future course, does not include 02:44: a link. The course, cannot be viewed until the start date. 02:49: If you are enrolled in groups, the group section displays any groups within 02:53: your current courses. You can do, all your groups in your groups list. 02:58: To view a group home page, click the group named link. 03:03: You can locate your course, ID number at the end of your course URL. 03:08: This guy covered how to view all my canvas courses as a student.

How do I publish a course?