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Canvas@Illinois, Behavior With Term, Course and Section Dates

This article summarizes the behavior of the start/end date hierarchy between terms, courses and sections.

Section, course and term dates make up the hierarchy of dates within Canvas. Here are some behaviors you can expect within Canvas, in general and within our institution (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign):

  • Terms in Canvas are defined with a start/end date acquired from Banner.
  • All new registrar-affiliated courses in Canvas are built using course availability dates acquired from Banner.
  • Students inherit the course/term start/end dates, while Teachers, TA's and Designers inherit a "whenever" start date to the term end date.
  • Students are currently restricted from accessing the course before the start date (applied globally as an immutable institution setting).
  • Individual departments/courses can determine if they want to allow students to access their course following course end (it's enabled by default, disallowing student access following course/term end date)
  • When beyond the course/term dates, a Canvas course "freezes", locking content and membership for the course as "read-only" for teachers, etc. (can still be used as a source for content copy to a new course)
  • If students need additional time in a course, please refer to this Illinois KB article to request this: Canvas, Temporarily Extend Course Access to Student(s) (uillinois.edu)