Don’t forget to publish your Canvas course before the quarter begins. Below is a step-by-step checklist of items to complete prior to publishing a course.
Course status notification on home page
If a course is unpublished you’ll see a pink notification message on the homepage. You can click the “Publish Course” button to immediately publish your course and make it available to students. We recommend waiting until your course is set up and ready to be released.
Figure 1: Notification message
Ways to publish a course
There are 4 different ways to publish a course. The first option, is clicking the Publish Course button as described above.
The second is clicking the Publish button in the right hand sidebar from the Home page.
The third option is publishing a course from Settings.
The forth option is publishing a course directly from the Canvas course card on the main dashboard.
Select home page
The Syllabus is the default home page for new Canvas courses.
If you’d like to modify the home page, select Choose Home Page from the right-hand menu, under Course Status.
Home page options include Course Activity Stream, Pages Front Page, Course Modules, Assignment List or Syllabus. Once you have selected an option, click Save. Please note that if you don’t select an option, the home page will remain as the Syllabus.
Publish a Course
To publish a course, click the Publish button from the right-hand sidebar of the home page. The course is published and available to students once the button appears green.
