Canvas allows instructors to control student access to their course as a whole or particular elements or activities. This article describes the key differences in access control instructors must learn when switching from eClass and details the new terminology in Canvas.

There are also some limitations to these workflows that instructors need to be aware of.

Change the start or end dates of a course

A course's start and end dates are set at course creation, but you can hide your course from students by changing its start or end dates.

Note: you may be unable to change your course end date if the term has ended. In this case, contact eClass support for assistance.

Some important caveats apply, but you will not experience any issues if you confine your changes to the start and end dates in the course participation settings.

To change your course dates,

1. Click on Settings at the bottom of the left course navigation menu
2. On the Course details tab, scroll down to the Participation settings
3. Depending on the current progress of your course, change a Start or End date
    that will make the course unavailable

4. Click Update course details at the bottom of the screen

Note: Do not change the Course drop-down menu selection as this change will clear all of the dates in your course.

Publish or unpublish course activities

You can unpublish any course activity by clicking the green checkmark to the right of the assignment name. But there are exceptions:

1. Assignments with student submissions cannot be unpublished.

2. Quizzes with student submissions cannot be unpublished.

In both cases, you will notice that the checkmark has faded. If you click on it or hover your mouse over it, you see a popup message indicating that it cannot be unpublished.

Publish or unpublish a module

If you have hidden your Assignments and Quizzes and attached them to Modules, you can publish or unpublish multiple items by clicking the checkmark or stop sign to the right of the module title:

You can restrict access to a module by switching to the Assign to tab. By default, a module is assigned to Everyone, but you may wish to restrict access to only a subset of enrollees:

Note: You have several options for hiding and unhiding content in a module, but even if you hide the entire module, items with student submissions will not be hidden.

Using requirements to restrict access

Requirements specify which items or activities a student needs to complete for the entire module to be considered complete. You can also use requirements to force students to complete a module sequentially.

1. To specify which items or activities need to be completed before a student can move on, click on the three dots menu to the right of the module name and select Edit:

2. Click on + Requirement:

3. Specify whether all activities must be completed and whether in sequential order or whether a single activity must be completed:  

If you have added your items in the order you want them completed, once students have clicked on the initial page, they can't move on to the next item until they have completed all of the requirements for the first item.

Requirements can include a minimum score on an assignment or quiz.

You keep clicking the +Requirement button until all of the items you want completed are in the list of requirements. You can add pages, quizzes, and assignments in the module.

Each item will have a Next button at the bottom right.

Here is what it would look like in Student View:

All items after the initial page are greyed out until the preceding item is completed.

You can also restrict assignments and quizzes by the number of attempts and all items by date.

Using prerequisites to restrict access to modules

Modules with prerequisites require students to complete previous modules before accessing the new content.

1. To specify which module needs to be completed before a student can move on, click on the three dots menu to the right of the module name and select Edit:

2. Click on + Prerequisite:

3. Select the prerequisite module and click Save:

Restricting access to pages

Just as you can with assignments and quizzes, you can restrict access to Canvas pages to specific users and by time and date.

1. To hide a page, go to the Pages menu in the left course navigation menu.

2. Click on the View all pages button on the top left of the menu:

3. Click on the page name in the list of pages.

4. Click the Edit button at the top left of the page.

5. Scroll down to find the Assign Access settings:

6. Click Save at the bottom right of the page.