If your students report that they can't see your course materials, double-check to make sure that your course content is visible. You must publish both your Canvas course site as a whole, as well as individual assignments, pages, and files, for students to be able to see them.
Publish Your Course Site
When course sites are created for a new term in Canvas they are all initially unpublished and therefore not visible to students. To make your course site available, on the right side of the course home page, click the Publish button. You will be able to toggle the published state on and off until students submit an assignment - after this you will not be able to unpublish the course to hide it from your students. More detailed instructions are available.
Publish Specific Course Material
Newly created content in Canvas, such as assignments or pages, may be created in an unpublished state. There are multiple ways to publish content.
- To ensure that a new item in Canvas is published right away upon creation, click the Save & Publish button, rather than the Save button
- To publish a previously-created item, at the top of the page, click the Unpublished button to toggle it to Published
- You can also publish items which appear in a list (such as in the Files, Assignments, or Modules areas) by looking to the right of the item and clicking the circle with the line through it to toggle the item to published
Need additional help? Contact the HWS IT Services Digital Learning Team.