About Terms, Start and End Dates, Instructor of Record, Term Naming

Canvas terms are created for the Spring, Summer, and Fall semesters. Within those terms, courses are automatically provisioned and assigned to the "Instructor of Record" as listed in Banner. Canvas receives updates from Banner several times a day to keep everything in sync. Once an instructor makes a course active, it becomes visible to students and remains accessible between the course’s start and end dates within the term.

Terms

In most cases, "terms" (typically aligned with semesters Fall, Spring, Summer) determine when courses appear on an individual's "Dashboard." Course offerings for automatically provisioned courses will be visible to instructors within a few weeks after registration begins for an upcoming term. Once the upcoming term courses are loaded into the Canvas system, instructors can access their courses via the "Dashboard" or "Courses" icon from the global navigation. 

Start and End Dates

Students can access a course only between its Start and End Dates. Instructors must publish the course for students to access it. For step-by-step instructions, see How to Publish a Course. While a course can be published before the start date, students will not be able to enter until the start date arrives.

To check or edit the course dates, go to Settings > Course Details.

Once a course is published and the term begins, avoid unpublishing it, as this may confuse students. Instead, consider hiding specific content rather than restricting access to the entire course.

Instructor of Record

The Instructor of Record is assigned in Banner as the official instructor for a course. Course and enrollment data in Canvas come directly from Banner. Instructors should work with their department or the Registrar’s Office to ensure their information is accurate.

Banner allows multiple instructors for a course. If additional instructors need access, departments can add them in Banner, or the Instructor of Record can manually enroll co-instructors in Canvas.

About Term Naming

In Brightspace the courses are provisioned and updated from the Banner system. Banner system course naming protocols use a specific code to identify what semester a course is associated with, and this code also appears in the course "Code" that is displayed in Brightspace.

In Banner, to describe a semester, a 2-digit code (as below) is appended to a year (rendered yyyy).

• 30 = Spring semester
• 50 = Summer semester
• 70 = Fall semester

Example:

A history course offered in the Fall of 2012 looks like this: