Publishing in Canvas

What Publish Means in Canvas

Canvas uses the terms publish and unpublish to indicate what content will be visible to your participants. Unpublished content is considered to be in draft form and published content is complete and ready for participants to interact with.

Publishing happens on three levels in Canvas:

• The individual content pieces (Course Instructor/Teacher)
• The modules (Course Instructor/Teacher)
• The course (Canvas System Admin at Region 13)

Canvas teachers/instructors are able to publish and unpublish at the content and module level. Course publishing is done by a system admin for Region 13. Course publishing happens at the very end of development when the course is ready to go live, during the publishing process, or by request. 

Instructor Level Publishing

You can publish your content pieces in a few ways: 

How to Publish Content (documents, discussions, assignments, etc,)

• When you're editing, at the bottom of the page, there is an option to Save, but there is also an option to Save & Publish. Clicking this option will publish that piece of content. 

  

• When you open your content piece, at the top right near the Edit button, there will be a Publish or Unpublish button.

How to Publish Modules

• In the module view of your course, every piece of content and module header will have one of two icons on the far right. Clicking the icon will publish or unpublish that piece of content (or module). The icons look like this:

You can publish or unpublish modules in the module view of your course by clicking the icon at the right of the module header. None of your published content or modules will be visible until your course is published at the organizational level, so feel free to publish away while you build. Publishing is a great way to keep track of completed content in a course build because it gives you a satisfying green check in the module view. You can also be quietly working on unpublished content in a live course and publish/release it when you're ready. 

Note: Published content will not be visible to your participants in the module view of your course until it is in a published module. Always check the Student View of your course to see what your course will look like to your participants and make sure all the content you want visible is visible.

Course Publishing for Region 13

When your course is complete and you are ready to publish, complete the Canvas Course Checklist for Region 13 and send an email request to publish@esc13.txed.net to request the final publication of your course. Below are a couple of ways to check on the status of your course in Canvas.

How to Check Course Publish Status in Dashboard View

Click Dashboard icon on the Global Navigation Menu. The Dashboard view will display your courses in two categories, published and unpublished.

How to Check Course Publish Status in Course Details

1. Open your course.
2. Click on Setting in the Global Navigation Menu on the left side of the page.
3. Select the Course Details tab.
4. Look near the top right of that page for publishing status.     

   

If you have any questions, please let us know at onlinelearning@esc13.txed.net or by clicking the Contact Us link below!