Post-Semester Checklist

Your Canvas Dashboard displays your active courses. Active courses are courses that are published and that are within the course start and end dates. The Dashboard may display past courses that are still favorited as well as courses that have no specified end date. 

How to remove courses from your dashboard Links to an external site.

At the end of each semester you may want to archive old messages in the Canvas Inbox.

To archive messages:

1. Hold down the Ctrl or CMD key on your keyboard and individually click on messages on the left side of your Inbox screen.  This will select only the specified messages you want to archive.  Then, when those are selected, just click on the archive button at the top of the Inbox (the icon immediate to the left of the trash can).
2. Select the first message that you want to archive from the left side of your Canvas Inbox.  Hold down the Shift key on your keyboard.  While continuing to hold Shift, scroll to the last message you'd want archive, and then click on that message.  This will select your first message, the last message, and all messages between them.  Click the archive button to put them in the archive.

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.

There is nothing you have to do to close your Canvas course. Your course will automatically be set to Concluded status and moved to 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.

Instructors and students can access concluded course by clicking Coursesin the main Canvas menu, then the All Courses link. Concluded courses are listed under Past Enrollments. 

If you would like to manually adjust your course availability and restrict access earlier than the dates outlined above, the Canvas guide linked below explains how.

How do I change the start and end dates for a course? Links to an external site.

Instructors can perform the following actions with a concluded course

• Download grades to a CSV (Excel) file (Text instructions (Links to an external site.))
• Use as a source for copying into a new course (Text instructions (Links to an external site.)|Video tutorial (Links to an external site.))
• Export a course (Text instructions (Links to an external site.))
• Access material using visible navigation links (any links that were hidden from students will be hidden in concluded courses)

Instructors cannot 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

You can export a Canvas course to give to someone in another Canvas account, to upload to another institution's account at a later date, or to create a copy as a backup on your local computer. You can then Import an Export File Links to an external site. into Canvas at any time. See the following page - How do I export a Canvas course

If you want to download your grades, you can save them as a CSV (Excel) file. See the following page - How Do I Export Grades in the Gradebook

You can also copy a course into a new course shell. Copied courses are added to the same subaccount as the course that is copied and you will automatically be added as an instructor. Courses should be copied when you want to use or repurpose previously created content including course settings, syllabus, assignments, modules, files, pages, discussions, quizzes, and question banks. You can also copy or adjust events and due dates. See the following pages on how to copy a course - How to Copy a Canvas Course | Course Creation Video Tutorial