In the example below:

Assuming the course is published, students will be able to participate in this course starting at Aug 28, 2017 at 9 am through Dec 20, 2017 at 5 pm. Depending on the start and end dates of your course, you have the ability to change the dates and times by clicking the calendar button.

Instructors can change the language settings for your course. This feature could be useful for advanced foreign language courses, all course navigation and options will appear within the chosen language for the instructor and students. Otherwise, it should not be adjusted.

If you are using Turnitin, you can add a custom Turnitin policy or note here for students to see.

Add your grading scheme for this course.

In most cases, the default setting, Private (Copyrighted) should be used. Talk with your campus OER committee or campus librarians about the licensing of your course if you want to change the default.

As with license visibility, content can be kept private or made publicly available.

• Course: Content is available to all users associated (enrolled) in the course.
• Institution: Content is available to users associated with the institution. This option allows users in your institution to view the selected content before they enroll in the course.
• Public: Content is available to anyone with the URL and web crawlers such as Google. This option also can break integration with ACES and publishers, and is not recommended.

Restricting students from viewing course after end date:

Default settings allow students to view the course even after it has ended but all content is displayed in a read-only state. However, when the student restriction for the course end date is enabled, students can no longer view the course once it has concluded. Because the course doesn't appear in the student's course list, the student cannot check their Canvas course grades either.

Restricting students from viewing before start date: 

When a student enrolls in a future course, the course displays in the Future Enrollments section in the student Courses list. Once a course is published, the students can view course content at any time before the course begins. However, when the student restriction for the course start date is enabled, students cannot view a link to the course until the start date, even if the course is published.

Format options include On-campus, Online, and Blended. Neither Format or Description are used by us in any meaningful way. Therefore, there is no reason to adjust these settings unless it is for your personal information.

Below the Description box, there is a link to "more options". This is where Canvas hides the cool stuff! Most of these options are the instructor's preference, but we've included recommendations for changing the default settings when the impact is great.

Show recent announcements on Course home page:

This works on all the different home page options and will show up to 15 "active" announcements.

Recommendations: no more than 3 -5 announcements and to use the announcements as timely, need to know items for your course.

Let students attach files to discussions

Recommendation: check this box.

Let students create discussion topics:

Recommendation: uncheck this option.

Let students edit or delete their own discussion posts:

Recommendation: uncheck this option.

Hide totals in student grades summary:

This option doesn't disable the students' ability to use the what-if gradebook feature, but hides totals in students' grade summaries. For courses using weighted assignment groups, assignment group totals are also hidden from students when this option is checked.

Hide grade distribution graphs from students:

Similar to the above option but hides hides the summary statistics of the class and assignments grades including the whisker plot (grade distribution) graphs.

Disable comments on announcements:

You can disable comments for announcements and have that setting applied to every announcement throughout the entire course. However, you can also choose to close announcements on a per-announcement basis.

If you disable comments in your course and choose to remove the checkbox at a later date, the option only applies to new announcements. Any existing announcements will remain locked and must be opened to comments individually.

Recommendation: check this option.

Create, rename, and edit course pages:

The "Only Teachers... can create rename, and edit course pages by default" setting will allow you to give Students or "Anyone" permission to alter course pages.

Recommendation: Do not change this default.

Q. When I copy my courses from semester to semester, will all these settings copy as well? 

A. Yes! Course settings are retained upon course copy.

Q. I want my students to see the syllabus and maybe the homepage before the course begins. Should I make it public? Adjust other settings?

A. If you want your students to just see the syllabus and your home page with your contact information, for example, then hide all the navigation items except the syllabus or change the home page to syllabus. Once the course starts, move the needed navigational items back into the course. Use the student view to verify that students will see what you want them to see.

Q. I want to allow an outside person to view my course, for reasons of course evaluation, accreditation, etc. Wouldn't it be easiest to make the course public?

A. It is never recommended to make a live, academic course "public". If you need to give someone access to your course, talk to your IIC about getting an external user account created for the person, so they can be added to the course as an official Observer.