• Students cannot access a course in Canvas until it's published. Only teachers can see their course until it is published. When the course is unpublished, you will see the Unpublished status in the Course Status dropdown menu on the top right corner of the course's Home Page.
  
• To publish your course, click on the Course Status dropdown menu on the top right corner of your screen. Select Publish.
  
• The Course Status dropdown menu now displays Published. 
  
• You will also see a temporary notification at the top of your course’s home page confirming that your course was successfully updated. 
  

Unpublishing your Canvas Course

It is not possible to unpublish a course once there are graded student submissions. Once there are graded student submissions in a course, you will no longer see the Course Status dropdown menu on your course's home page. 

You will still be able to see a Course is Published status indicator on your course's Settings page. 

A published course also displays under Published Courses on your Canvas Dashboard. 

Visibility of Courses to Students

• Enrolled students will be able to participate in your course and see its content one week before the semester starts. After the semester ends, your course will be in a read-only state for students.

Publishing Your Course versus Publishing Elements of Your Course

• Please remember that different elements in your course (Assignments, Discussions, Pages, etc.) will also need to be published when they are ready to be seen. Otherwise, they will be invisible to students.
  • Whenever you see a circle icon with a slash, it means unpublished.   
    
  • A green icon with the check mark means published.       
     
  • You can toggle those back and forth.
  • A quick way to make sure everything you want visible is published is go into Student View.
• If you use Modules in your course, the modules themselves also need to be published in order to be visible to students. This is in addition to publishing the content within a module, such as Assignments and Discussions. There is also an option to publish a module and all of its items in one click.