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No access: The user can't open the course site.
Read-only access: With read-only access, anyone with a Student role can view Published content but can't submit assignments. Read only access for someone with a Teacher, TAs or Designer role means that they can see published and unpublished course content and student work, but cannot edit the course content or grades.
Read/Write access: Read/write access allows Students to fully participate in the course: viewing Published content, submitting assignments, and taking quizzes (subject to the settings of individual assignments or modules). Read/write access for the Teacher, TAs and Designer roles allows them to update the course, including the dates for the course.
Publishing
Students have no access to a Canvas course until the Teacher publishes it. This is true no matter how the term, course, and section dates are set. On the course homepage, the instructor should click Publish:
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Instructors can also control access to specific parts of courses by publishing or setting dates for individual Modules or content items such as Assignments.
Dates
In Canvas, every course has three levels of start and end dates:
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Term Dates
Term start dates determine the default dates when users can have read-only or read/write access to a course. When the term, course, and section have all reached their respective end dates, all course enrollments are automatically set to Concluded. This makes the course read-only for Teachers and Students.
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Campus Canvas administrators can use UWS's custom Terms Tool to see the start and end dates for their campus's Canvas terms.Many DLE institutions have adopted standardized Canvas term dates, making them easier to predict and manage across institutions. Term start dates are typically set to "Whenever," meaning that users can access courses before the term begins. Term and Teacher end dates are typically set to roughly 13 months after the end date in the Student Information System, while Student, TA, and Designer end dates are typically set to a few weeks after the end date in the Student Information System.DLE term dates frequently follow this pattern:
Winter terms
Term starts whenever and ends a year after classes end, on February 28
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Student, TA and Designer read/write access begins at term start and ends a few weeks after classes end on February 15
Fall terms
Term starts whenever and ends a year after classes end, on January 31
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Student, TA and Designer read/write access begins at term start and ends a few weeks after classes end, on January 15
Spring terms
Term starts whenever and ends a year after classes end, on June 30
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Student, TA and Designer read/write access begins at term start and ends a few weeks after classes end, on June 15
Summer terms
Term starts whenever and ends a year after classes end, on September 30
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Student, TA and Designer read/write access begins at term start and ends a few weeks after classes end, on September 15
UWEX terms and terms with a month in the title
These follow a different set of patterns. Consult your local Canvas admin.
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Previous versions of this guide had indicated that course or section dates had to fall within the overall start and end dates of the term, but further testing has shown this to not be true.
Course Dates
Rather than accepting the default term start and end dates, instructors can use course dates to restrict student access to a course. See the How do I change the start and end dates for a course guide.
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Course dates are blank in new courses unless instructors set them manually. Course dates are not sent through the PeopleSoft integration. If section dates are set, they override course dates.
Section Dates
Section dates allow instructors to set different start and end dates for different sections of a course while maintaining a common set of content and assignments. See the How do I change the start and end dates for a course section as an instructor? guide.
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As discussed above, no matter what section dates are set, students have no access to the course materials until an instructor Publishes the course. Students may have no access, read-only access, or read/write access to a course if it is Published before the section start date, depending on the course and section settings chosen by the instructor. See the "Limit Student Participation" section of the How do I change the start and end dates for a course section as an instructor? guide.
How it all Fits Together
For a good example of why instructors might set course and section dates in Canvas, and how those dates interact, see the following Canvas guide:
Terms, Courses, and Section Enrollment (Instructure)