In discussion replies, a blue dot indicates the reply is new and unread. A white dot indicates a reply is read. When you navigate away from the discussion or refresh the page, the blue dots will change to white dots indicating the replies are read.

You can tell Canvas not to automatically mark your discussion replies as read so that you can manually control which replies you haven't viewed. Your selection for this option will apply to the Discussions settings for all of your courses. By default, manually marking posts as read is turned off.

You can manually mark discussion replies as read or unread at any time.

As an admin, the Account Settings tab contains multiple settings you can control and change in your Canvas account.

Note: This lesson indicates the settings that you can manage for your entire account. Other integrations may be available with the assistance of your Customer Success Manager. For a full list of integrations available in Canvas, please view the Canvas integrations lesson.

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.