0.1.5 Publishing

Step 1: Publish/Unpublish Modules/Pages As Needed

you may choose to publish individual modules. In order to publish specific pages, you must follow the tutorial below to publish modules. 

As an instructor, you can publish or unpublish a module in a course. Unpublished modules are invisible to students.

Modules control the entire flow of your course and its content. When you add items to a Module, please be aware that the status of the Module overrides the state of the individual module items. You may want to consider leaving all Module items in an unpublished state until you are ready to publish the entire Module.

View Status of All Modules

On the Index page, you can view the state of each module. Green icons indicate the module is published (1). Gray icons indicate unpublished modules (2). You can change the status of a module by toggling the published or unpublished icons.

Publish a Module

Note: Publishing a module will automatically publish any unpublished content items within the module.

Publish

To publish a module, select the module's unpublished icon. The hover text will confirm you want to publish the module.

Unpublish

Change Status of Module Content Items

You can view and change the status of individual module content items as well. Although publishing a module will also publish all module items, you can manually unpublish individual module items later. Students cannot view unpublished module items as part of a published module.

If you add a restricted file as a module content item, restricted files appear with a lock icon. Restricted files act as published files and can be viewed by students (depending on the restriction setting). Learn more about restricting files in Canvas Links to an external site..

Step 2: Run "Validate Links in Content" Tool

It is important to verify that all links are working throughout a course. The course link validator tool can help make this task easy for faculty designing and teaching courses. The course link validator tool searches through course content and returns invalid or unresponsive external links in both published and unpublished content.

The link validator also includes deleted links. Deleted links are links that are still in the course, but their linked content has been deleted (such as course files or pages).

Note: Some links flagged as unresponsive are inaccessible by Canvas servers and will still work for students.

From within a Canvas Course, select Settings.

Then on the right-hand side navigation, select Validate Links in Content.

Step 3: Publish Course

Finally, Publish Your Course

You must publish a course before students can access it and its contents. Students cannot see unpublished courses and content. Publishing your course will send invitations to any users who were manually added to your course. Course invitations will not be sent until after the course start date. (The start date is commonly the term date unless the term is being overridden by a specific course or section date in Course Settings.)

You may also choose to individually publish pages and files in a published module. You will need to follow the steps to publish your course first before being able to publish individual modules, pages, and files. 

Publish Your Course - Open Course

In Global Navigation, select the Courses link.  Your courses will be organized by published courses (2) and unpublished courses (3). To open an unpublished course, click the name of the course (4).

Select Publish

Select Home in the left-hand course navigation pane. In the Sidebar, click the Publish button.

If you need to unpublish your course, select the Unpublish button in the sidebar. Students who already received course invitations will not be able to access your course.

Once your course contains a graded submission, the course status will no longer display in the sidebar and you will no longer be able to unpublish your course.

View Confirmation

A message will appear at the top of your screen confirming the publishing of your course.

 

Student View

Students cannot see any of the actions involved with published status, such as published and unpublished icons and setting icons. Students will only see published modules and available module content items, which are displayed in gray text. Learn more about Student View Links to an external site. to quickly check if students can access specific content and preview your student's perspective - no extra test-student account needed!