If you're teaching more than one section of the same course, you can cross-list the Canvas sites. See: Cross-listing Course Sites.

Move your teaching materials from the draft or previous course site to your official course site. See: How do I import content from another Canvas course?

• Configure your term dates, grading scheme, course visibility, material licensing, and whether people can join the site.
• Access settings by clicking Settings in the Course Navigation Menu.

Term Dates

Courses automatically appear to students based on the semester schedule (they can only see teaching materials if the course is published). To manually control course display, you can change the course Start and End dates. 

1. Go to your official course and click Settings → Course Details.
2. Next to Participation, change Term to Course. Doing so de-couples the course term dates from the default semester dates. 
3. Under Term, next to Starts and Ends, enter start and end dates. You need to enter both dates! 
   
4. Choose whether to restrict students from viewing the course before the start date and after the end date. 
5. Scroll down and click Update Course Details. Changes are not automatically saved. 

Other Settings

• Content License: You can change the copyright settings for your teaching materials by selecting from the options next to License. The default setting is private, copyrighted materials.
• Content Visibility: You can make your teaching materials visible to those not enrolled in the course. Student work is always protected. The default visibility setting is Course, where only you and your students can see the materials. To change visibility:

1. Next to Visibility, click Course to share with people who are already in the course, click Institution to share the course with those in Virginia Tech, or click Public.
2. To make only your syllabus visible outside of your course, check Customize and choose a syllabus visibility setting.
3. Click Update Course Details. 

You can make draft course sites "joinable," so others can self-enroll. Training sites often use this feature. To do so:

1. Go to the draft course that you manually created and click on Settings.
2. Locate the SIS ID field and ensure it is blank, otherwise the self-enroll option will not be available for the course.
   • If the SIS ID field is not blank, contact a Canvas admin to remove it for you by going to the 4Help Portal, log in, and click Get Help. Write that you're trying to create a draft course with self enrollment and need assistance from TLOS.
3. Under the text box below Description, click more options. 
4. Check Let students self-enroll by sharing with them a secret URL. 
5. Check Add a "Join this Course" link to the course home page.
6. Tell students how to self-enroll. 
   
   1. Copy the course's Home page URL.
   2. Email students the URL and tell them: "Log into Canvas, then go to the course URL included here, click Join this Course, and then click Enroll in Course."

      

      

You must use the Canvas Redirect tool to add a link to an external website or a Canvas Page to a Course Navigation Menu. To add a link: 

1. Collect the URL of the website or Canvas Page you want to add. 
2. Go to the course site where you want to add a Course Navigation Menu link. 
3. Click Settings and go to the Apps tab.
4. Click the arrow icon for the Redirect app.

   

5. The +Add App button will appear. Click it.

   

6. The Add App window will appear.
7. Next to Name, name your link. This text will appear on the Course Navigation Menu.
8. Next to URL Redirect, paste the URL of the website or Canvas Page.
9. Check Show in Course Navigation.
10. Click Add App.

    

Please note if you copy a course's content into a new site, the linked URL in the Redirect tool will be copied.

• If you linked to a non-Canvas website, you don't need to do anything. The link will still work. 
• If you linked to a Canvas Page in the old site, the old page will be linked to from the new site. So, make a new Redirect link that points to the new site's Canvas Page and hide the old link.

Canvas can be extended by integrating external tools. Software companies, textbook publishers, and training websites all make Canvas external tools. 

See: Canvas - Requesting and Use External Tools (LTI Tools) for details.

• You can use most external tools without help from a Canvas admin.
• Virginia Tech must approve new external tools before they're added to Canvas.
  
  • To request a new tool, on the Learning Management System (Canvas) request form, under Service Requested, check Request External Tool be Added to Canvas. 

There are two ways to conclude a course before the end of the term:

• Go to Settings and click Conclude This Course.
• Go to Settings and change the End date to a date in the past. Be sure to check Users can only participate in the course between these dates. Click Update Details.

To import content from a concluded course to a new one:

1. Go to course Settings and click Import Course Content in the bar on the right side.
2. Under Content Type, click Copy a Canvas Course.
3. Under Search for a course, check Include completed courses to make your concluded course sites searchable.
4. Choose if you want to import All content or Select specific content.
5. You can adjust events and due dates for your content if needed.
6. Click Import.

   

• You need to unconclude a course site to make changes to the site, such as adding people or editing teaching materials.
• Instructors can unconclude official course sites by changing the term dates so the end date is in the future. See Term dates. 
• If the term dates are inaccessible and the Participation field is set to Course already instead of Term, a VT Canvas admin will have to unconclude the course for you. Request this through 4Help by clicking Get Help on the 4Help portal.

The +People and +Guests buttons in People will be grayed out if a course site is concluded. You must unconclude a course site to add people by changing the term dates so the End date is in the future. See Term dates.

You need department head permission to delete a course site, because Virginia Tech Intellectual Property Policy 13000 grants the university perpetual rights to use materials for teaching and research. You cannot unpublish official course sites after students have submitted graded assignments.

Instead, you can:

• Conclude the site to move it under Past Enrollments on the All Courses page.
• Change the term dates to restrict access and visibility to the site. If the present date is not between the start and end dates, students will not be able to access the site. See: Term dates.