Canvas Support has removed Canvas courses of past semesters from users' Courses menu and enabled date restrictions on past courses in Canvas to make them read-only. This prevents both students and instructors from making any additional changes to the site. This action was taken to resolve some issues where instructors were editing past sites (instead of current ones) and for basic housekeeping (since these courses get moved out of a user's current course list). This action also protects student data in the case of a grade challenge. The courses will be maintained for grade challenges for five years. 

To access a Canvas course from a past semester:

1. Log into Canvas
2. Click on the Courses tab from the Global Navigation menu.
3. Then, click on the All Courses link.
4. On the next page, scroll down to view Past Enrollments, where you will be able to view your past courses. 
5. Enter a course by clicking on its link.

For instructors:

If there is any content in any previous courses you have problems accessing, please let Canvas Support know and we can copy the content to a development shell so that you can access the material. 

If you need to have a student with an incomplete added to the course to complete coursework after the term end date,  please submit a ticket with the student name, course id, and term. For more information about incompletes.

For students:

Please ask your instructor for permission to access this content, and if they allow it, have them send an email to Canvas Support at [email protected] in which they request to have their site re-enabled.

As with content access, the read-only status prevents you from editing your old Canvas courses, including any attempts at enrolling new people. If you want someone to have access to your old Canvas course, please contact Canvas Support. 

Yes! Please note that the read-only status for past courses does not affect the ability for instructors to copy old course content into new Canvas courses. Copying content from an old course into a new course occurs during the course-site creation process.

Also, please note that the read-only status affects how your course links display in your Courses menu from Global Navigation, as only Canvas courses for current semester courses appear on it.

If you are a student and your course is not visible in the Past Enrollments section, your instructor may have restricted access to the course. In that case, you would need to contact the instructor.