Change Course Participation Dates in Canvas
Every academic Canvas course is created with Start and End Dates that match the Term dates it was created with. These are found in the Participation field within Course settings. Term dates in Canvas align with the Academic Calendar start of undergraduate classes and end, 10 days after the last day of classes. If the Term dates do not meet your course needs, instructors can change them. This guide shows you how to check the dates and adjust if needed.
Need more information? Term dates are one aspect of managing access to your Canvas course.
Important! Empty Dates Cause Issues
Do not leave Canvas Participation date boxes blank. Blank dates cause two known issues:
- Students can keep submitting work in the course, including submitting assignments and taking quizzes indefinitely.
- The course remains in current enrollments, rather than moving to your and students' past enrollments list.
Step 1: Confirm Term Dates
Default Term dates are displayed in every Canvas course. Open your Canvas course and navigate to Settings, then look for the "Participation: Start and End dates" to decide if they work for you. Consider the following:
- Do you want students to begin working before the start date?
- Do you want students to stop working earlier or later than the end date?
- Will you have grading completed before the end date?
Step 2: Change to Course Dates
If the unchangeable 'Term Dates' aren't appropriate for how you manage a course, you'll need to change the participation setting to 'Course'.
First, change the Participation option from Term to Course. Making this change is required for Canvas to accept new date entries.
Second, enter your new start and end dates and click Update Course Details to save your changes.
Note, that you can also choose to restrict students from viewing the course before or after it begins and ends. Consider students prefer looking back at courses during their academic journey when deciding to restrict viewing.
