We’re almost there! Let’s finish strong and (maybe?) think a little bit about prepping for spring online teaching 😅
Canvas End of Term
After Dec. 31, your fall Canvas classes go into read-only mode for you and your students, and move from the Canvas Dashboard to the Past Enrollments area of Canvas (select Courses at left in Canvas, then All Courses). If you wish to remove access to any of your course materials for your current students beyond this semester, you need to do so by Dec. 31. Review our Canvas end-of-term guide for details. It also discusses what you need to do if you have any students who will receive Incomplete grades, as well as what to do if you wish to close course access sooner than Dec. 31.
The SOAR (Student Online Academic Readiness) workshop returns in spring. In partnership with librarians, we’ve already lined up many workshop times for the spring semester. Please recommend this to your students as you build syllabi and welcome pages for your classes! As always, we’ll have Canvas announcements reminding students of sessions each week. And as always, you can check to see if your students have attended one of these workshops in order to incentivize participation.
The SOAR (Student Online Academic Readiness) workshop returns in spring. In partnership with librarians, we’ve already lined up many workshop times for the spring semester. Please recommend this to your students as you build syllabi and welcome pages for your classes! As always, we’ll have Canvas announcements reminding students of sessions each week. And as always, you can check to see if your students have attended one of these workshops in order to incentivize participation.
Happy break!
Jim Julius, Ed.D. Faculty Coordinator, Online Education
The following will help instructors understand how the end of semester is handled in Canvas, and how to update related Canvas course settings if necessary. By default, students who complete a class continue to have read-only access to the concluded class’s course materials, discussions, and grades. If you wish to restrict concluded class access, you must change the class settings before the end of the term, or get a Canvas administrator to help you after the end of the term.
Everything below applies to typical term-based Canvas classes. Canvas sandbox classes and Canvas shells used for organizations, departments, groups, etc. are not tied to any particular terms and thus remain available indefinitely.
Closing your Course
There is nothing you have to do to close your Canvas course; at the term end date (see below), your course will be set to Concluded status and moved onto the Past Enrollments course list for you and your students. By default you and your students will continue to have read-only access to the course.
Canvas Term End Dates
Semester
Date
Time
Fall 2023
Dec 31
12 am
Spring 2024
June 6
12 am
Summer 2024
August 20
12 am
Concluded Course Access
For both instructors and students, concluded courses can be found by clicking Courses in the main Canvas menu, then the All Courses link. Concluded courses are listed there under Past Enrollments. Concluded courses may notbe moved back onto the Dashboard – they must be accessed in this way.
Instructorscan perform the following actions with a concluded course
Access material using visible navigation links (any links that were hidden from students will be hidden in concluded courses)
Instructorscannot perform the following actions within a concluded course (do these before the end of the term!)
Edit course content
Edit Grades
View/download Analytics
View/download Item Analysis within Quizzes
Send a message to the class within Canvas
Change class access settings
Change class navigation
Studentscan perform the following actions by default within a concluded course
View Grades
View course content
View Discussions and Assignments
Send a message to the instructor
Students cannot perform the following actions within a concluded course
View Quiz questions and answers
Submit discussions, assignments, quizzes, and other course activities
Restricting Students from Viewing Some or All of a Completed Course
As described above, by default in Canvas, students have ongoing read-only access to course content in Canvas after the term ends. This can be a great feature, allowing students to review key learning resources from previous semesters. If, however, you wish to limit this access, follow one of the methods below before the end of the term. (If you need to make these changes to a course that is already concluded, contact Karen Turpin for assistance at kturpin@miracosta.edu)
Method 1: Hide Course Navigation menu links
If an instructor would like to limit access to major areas of course content, one method is to hide Navigation menu links. Note that if Navigation menu links are hidden, the instructor will also be unable to access them after the course concludes. This may be appropriate if you would like to leave Grades available to students, yet close off certain course content. The instructor may copy the course into another course to regain access to hidden menu items.
How to hide Course Navigation menu links
Click Settings in the Canvas course menu
Click Navigation in the tabs at the top.
Drag and drop the menu items from the top (viewable) area to the bottom (hidden) area or click the gear icon to the right of the menu item and select disable.
Click the Save button.
Method 2: Hide select course content
For more fine-grained control, certain course content such as files, pages, modules, or module items (but not assignments or discussions where students have participated) may be unpublished. As with hidden Navigation menu links, unpublished items are also inaccessible to the instructor after the course concludes.
If you wish to hide course items where students have participated, such as discussions or assignments, you cannot unpublish those. But there is a trick: simply set the availability date to sometime far in the future.
These options may be useful if you want students to be able to access most course content, but have select content that you prefer not to be accessed/shared in the future. The instructor may copy the course into a current course to be able to revisit/reuse hidden content.
Method 3: Restrict students from accessing entire course after term end date
The term end date is the final date in the current semester as listed in the table above. If an instructor would prefer the entire course and its course materials not be visible to students after the term end date:
Click Settings in the Canvas course menu.
For Participation: Select Term (this should be selected by default)
3. Select the checkbox for ‘Restrict students from viewing course after term end date‘.
5. Click the Update Course Details button at the bottom of the settings page.
This option will completely remove the course from the student’s view in Past Enrollments after the end term date passes. Students will not see the course and will have no access to course materials or grades. Instructors will continue to be able to access the course in Past Enrollments.
Resolving Incompletes
If you have assigned a student an incomplete ‘I‘ grade for the semester, contact Karen Turpin at kturpin@miracosta.edu or as soon as the paperwork is complete with Admissions and Records. Karen will create a new Canvas course section based on the original course. This new section will allow the student access to the course with the ability to submit work, and will give you access to grade the student’s work, for the time allowable by the Office of Admissions and Records.
Working with Concluded Courses to Build New Courses
As noted above, you may always export a concluded course for import back into Canvas (Text instructions), or use a concluded course as the source for copying into a new course (Text instructions | Video tutorial). If you wish to update the content of a concluded course for use in the future, but you do not have a current term course in which to do that, you may wish to request a Sandbox course to copy into and work with, since you cannot edit a concluded course directly.
Teaching a short course and/or need to close your course prior to the official term end date?
You can manually end your course by updating the course end date. This will disable the ability for students to submit any more work, and, if you select the setting enabling students to view the course after the end date, will move the course off of the students’ Canvas dashboard and into the Past Enrollments area. If you do not enable that access for students, the course will disappear from their Canvas altogether.
To change the Course Start and/or End Date
Click Settings in the Canvas course menu.
2. For Participation: Select Course
3. Change the Course Start and End Dates to reflect when you want students to have full access to the course.
4. If desired, select the checkboxes for ‘Restrict students from viewing course before course start date’ and/or ‘Restrict students from viewing course after the course end date’.
In the example below, students will not be able to participate in the course, even if it is published, until Jan 16 at 12 pm. The students will no longer be able to participate in the course after May 30 at 12 pm and the course will not be available to students for viewing.
Each term, typically in weeks 1-3, 5, and 9, Online Education offers multiple 1-hour Student Online Academic Readiness (SOAR) workshop sessions open to any student. The list of SOAR sessions is available on the TASC Student Workshop site. Students also have an announcement in Canvas with upcoming workshop dates/ times provided. Note: Prior to 2022, this workshop was known as the Student Orientation to Online Learning (SOOL).
SOAR has the following outcomes:
Students will learn habits and attitudes of successful online students
Students will be able to effectively select and get started in online classes
Students will be able to navigate and use basic online education tools (primarily Zoom & Canvas)
Students will be able to access key online technical and academic student support resources
SOAR is typically offered in-person at the Oceanside campus and online, though during COVID and for spring 2022, all sessions are online. (It was offered in-person at SEC but attendance was extremely low.) Student attendance at SOAR is recorded in SURF so that instructors may require attendance or provide extra credit (instructors, see below for details).
Students who attend SOAR are enrolled into a Canvas course that includes extensive information to support student success in online education. The course remains available to the students indefinitely.
The Canvas SOAR class is open for anyone to self-enroll in, and the main Online Education page also includes a recorded version of the online SOAR which is open for anyone to view. Simply self-enrolling and/or watching the recorded version does not make a student eligible to have their attendance recorded in SURF; attendance at a live in-person or online session is required.
Over 5500 students have participated since SOAR began in 2014. Research shows that from 2014 to 2018, 72.8% of those who attended SOAR in the same or a previous term successfully completed DE courses vs. a 65.9% DE success rate for students who had not attended a SOAR workshop.
Student Online Academic Readiness Attendance
Any instructor can use SURF to find out which of their students have attended.
Enter SURF, go to a Class Roster page, and scroll to the bottom
Click the “Student Orientation to Online Learning Roster” link (see image below)
A PDF should open in a new browser tab or window with a roster showing which students attended an orientation, and on what date. If the roster doesn’t open, please ensure that it wasn’t blocked by a popup blocker. Please note: you will see a spinner icon while the PDF is generating. This can happen quickly or it can take a significant amount of time – up to several minutes – so please be patient while the process runs.
Each semester I send out “midsemester grades” to all of my students. Students appreciate the heads up, and it often leads to conversations that benefit the students.
For those interested in sending out a “midterm report” regarding your students’ current grade in the course… consider using the message option in the “New Analytics” feature. With it, you can customize messages to go out to students based on their grade percentage (e.g., between 90% – 100%, 80% – 89%, 70% – 79%, 60% – 69%, etc.). This is an excellent way to let students know how they are currently doing in the course.
First Step: Grading and the Canvas Gradebook
Complete all grading 24 hours before sending out the midterm reports. The ‘New Analytics’ feature does not read directly from the gradebook… it has a lag of 24 hours before it is updated. Once you have finished grading… wait 24 hours before sending out the midterm reports.
As part of the grading, place a zero for any assignments overdue that are not submitted (otherwise, they are not included in the grade calculations)
Second Step: Enable the New Analytics Feature
Click on the ‘Settings’ option in your Canvas Course
Click on the ‘Features Options’ tab along the top
Click the ‘New Course and User Analytics’ option
Third Step: Open the New Analytics Feature
From the Home Page of your Canvas course, select ‘New Analytics’
Fourth Step: Prepare to Send Out Messages
Click on the ‘Envelop’ icon.
Fifth Step: Prepare to Send Out Messages
Provide the lower and upper range for grade percentage.
Type the Subject line and Message. Adjust both to be meaningful and helpful to the students receiving the message. I tend to say ‘Congratulations’ for all passing grades (A, B, and C), and let students with grades not quite passing that making a change now could help them to pass the course. For students significantly below passing, I share that a bigger ‘mid-course’ correction is needed, but that it remains within their options. Share resources, provide advice, and cheer them on.
Click ‘Send’
Repeat this process for each grade range you’ll be using (e.g., 90 – 100, 80 – 89, 70 – 79, 60 – 69, etc.).
Students that drop a course in SURF after the semester has started remain on the People roster in Canvas, but with an inactive role. Students in the inactive role do not see or have access to the Canvas course, but faculty may access activities and grades of an inactive student. This is particularly helpful when a student grade is challenged or if a faculty member is evaluating whether a dropped student is eligible to be reinstated to a course.
People
Within the People roster on Canvas, students that have dropped will have the inactive tag displayed to the right of their name. This identifier will remain next to the student’s name throughout the course unless the student is reinstated to the course. Click the student’s name to access additional information about the student and review the student’s completed activities.
You cannot hide inactive students in the People roster.
