You can set the format for a course in Course Settings. Course format shows whether the course is intended to be an on-campus course, a online course, or a blended course. Blended courses can sometimes be called hybrid courses, but the interpretation can be defined by your institution.

For admins, currently course format reporting can only be accessed through the Courses API.

A grading scheme is a set of criteria that measures varying levels of achievement in a course. Course-level grading schemes are grading schemes that can be defined at both the course level and the assignment level. Without a grading scheme, scores are not measured against any specific standard.

You can enable a grading scheme created by your institution, or you can add a new grading scheme specific to your course.

View a video about Grading Schemes.

If your Canvas admin has enabled self enrollment for your institution, you can enable self enrollment in your course. Self-enrollment allows a student to sign up for a course using a secret URL or code. Self-enrollment can be enabled for a course whether or not the course is publicly visible.

Note: If you cannot view the options for self enrollment, your admin has disabled this setting for your institution.

By default, the content you create in your course is considered copyrighted and private. However, if you want to make your course available to others for reuse, you can set a Creative Commons license for your course that specifies how you will let others copy, distribute, or display your work. The benefit of using Creative Commons licenses is that other instructors can use and build and improve upon your own content. This sort of creative collaboration can add value to your curriculum. You can reuse other users' content if it has a Creative Commons license.

Licenses range from restrictive use to public domain. If you are not sure what type of license you need, learn more about Creative Commons licensing. While setting a license, you can also use the Help icon to determine which type of Creative Commons license is best for you. You can change your course license at any time.

You can set a license for both private and public courses. Learn how to make your course available to users through course visibility options.

Note: If you are using Canvas Commons, the license you select for your course is not associated with the content license set for a shared resource.

As an Admin, you can choose to set default restrictions for student access in your institution. These restrictions include student access to courses before the start date and/or after the end date.

To manage student access, you can set the default value but allow instructors and sub-account admins to edit access for the course and sub-account levels as necessary, or you can set and lock the student access setting for the entire institution. The checkbox settings at the account level are passed to the sub-account and course levels as default values.

Restrict students from viewing course before start date: When a student enrolls in a future course, the course displays in the Future Enrollments section in the student Courses list. Once a course is published, the course displays an invitation to join the course, where the students can view course content at any time before the course begins. However, when the student restriction for the course start date is enabled, students cannot view a link to the course until the start date, even if the course is published.

Restrict students from viewing future courses in enrollments list: When a student enrolls in a future course, the course displays in the Future Enrollments section in the student Courses list. However, when the view courses before the start date restriction is enabled, a second option is displayed to completely remove the future enrollment from the Courses list. This setting can also be enabled to keep students from knowing they are enrolled in a course with a future start date.

Restrict students from viewing course after end date: Once a course has concluded, students can still view the course but all content is displayed in a read-only state. However, when the student restriction for the course end date is enabled, students can no longer view the course in the Courses list after the course has concluded. This setting can be used if your institution uses the course across multiple terms and want to restrict students from accessing prior content for future students, or if students have to re-enroll in the course.

These restriction settings also apply to the override start and end dates for the course. If no override dates are specified, the start and end dates apply to the term dates. Learn more about term and course dates in Canvas.