Publishing a Class

[ThomPerson]

How do I know "when" to publish a class, what are the specific concerns? I am working to define a class that will be ongoing as I teach the class.

I think I understand that "publishing" just allows the students to see the content. Are there any limitations once a class is published?

[Chris_Hofer · Accepted solution]

@ThomPerson ...

As a former Canvas admin in higher education, it has been my experience that instructors will typically publish their courses either on the published start date of the course or a few days prior.  Once the instructor has ensured that all of their content is ready to go (modules published, pages published, discussions published, quizzes published, assignments published, announcements created, etc.), then the instructor publishes the course.  It's also important to ensure that the start/end dates are set correctly via the course "Settings" page.  Often, this information is already brought over from your school's SIS (Student Information System).

When you say the course is "ongoing"...will you be re-using this single course for multiple semesters and enrolling different students each semester?  If so, I'd highly recommend that you have a new course shell created each semester and then enroll the new students in that shell.  You can then copy/import content from the past course into the new shell.  This keeps students more organized per semester and won't cause many headaches down the road.

Finally, as far as any limitations after publishing... once you publish the course, any of the content you've published in the course will be available to students (assuming you haven't restricted specific things with access dates).  Any content that you haven't published in the course yet will not be available to your students until you publish that content.

I'm sure that other instructors may chime in here and provide their own experiences since they will have more experience from a teaching perspective.  But, I hope the information I've provided will be of help to you.  Good luck!

[JanaSimpson]

I use Google Slides a lot to teach middle school social studies but I've noticed that if I need to make a change to a slide in a published course, it doesn't show up on the uploaded slideshow on Canvas. Am I doing something wrong, or is this just a limitation of Canvas? So far, I'm not really of fan of Canvas. It seems really difficult for the instructor than other options.

[Chris_Hofer]

@JanaSimpson ...

I haven't used Google Slides much (in either an education setting or personally), so I can't really help to answer your question, unfortunately.  Hopefully there will be other instructors here who have used Google Slides successfully in their courses that might be able to give you some insights.