How do I publish a course?
If you have permission to publish your course, you can publish your course from the Dashboard, the Course Home Page sidebar, the Course Settings sidebar, or the Course Setup Checklist.
Notes:
- You must publish a course before students can access it and its contents. Students cannot see unpublished courses and content.
- Publishing a course is a course permission. If you cannot publish your course, your institution has restricted this feature.
- Publishing your course will send invitations to any users who were manually added to your course. Users added via SIS import will not receive an invitation.
- Course invitations will not be sent until after the course start date. (The start date is commonly the term date, unless the term is being overridden by a specific course or section date in Course Settings.)
- If you are using a Free-for-Teacher account, you cannot publish a course until you have verified your email address.
- If your course has been published and includes grades, you cannot modify the course's published status.
Publish in Dashboard
Locate the Unpublished Courses section in the Dashboard [1].
Find the course you want to publish and click the Publish button [2].
Publish in Course
Open Course
![Open Course](https://media.screensteps.com/image_assets/assets/007/952/798/original/575b7320-541d-474b-92b4-9bf125955c20.png)
In Global Navigation, click the Courses link [1]. Your courses will be organized by published courses [2] and unpublished courses [3]. To open an unpublished course, click the name of the course [4].
Publish Course
![Publish Course](https://media.screensteps.com/image_assets/assets/008/576/673/original/791d61a1-733b-415b-a050-c3c3e7b5a9c7.png)
The course status displays in the Course Home Page sidebar and the Course Settings sidebar.
To publish your course, click the Course Status dropdown menu [1]. Then click the Publish button [2].
Note: On smaller screens, the sidebar may display beneath other page content.
View Confirmation
![View Confirmation](https://media.screensteps.com/image_assets/assets/000/749/356/original/40138966-a621-4893-be17-1d299feb48c4.png)
A message will appear at the top of your screen confirming the publishing of your course.
Unpublish Course
![Unpublish Course](https://media.screensteps.com/image_assets/assets/008/576/675/original/c0d6e6c9-7759-44e6-8243-613ae7993a6c.png)
If you need to unpublish your course, click the Course Status dropdown menu [1]. Then click the Unpublish button [2]. Students who already received course invitations will not be able to access your course.
Once your course contains a graded submission, the course status will no longer display in the sidebar and you will no longer be able to unpublish your course.