Your instructor must first "publish" a course site in Canvas in order for you to have access to it as a student. This is entirely up to the instructor to do this and does not happen automatically. One way to tell if a class that you are enrolled in has not yet been published is to click on the Courses icon on the far left side navigation bar, and then select All Courses:
On the screen that follows, at the top of the screen you will see a list of classes for the current term for which you are registered. In the screen capture below, note the circled column at the far right. The first class and the bottom two classes have been published and are likely appearing on the Canvas Dashboard automatically. (If they are not, you can click on the star icon on the far left to ensure it appears on your Dashboard.) On the other hand, two of the courses are not published. You cannot click the star icon to move any unpublished classes to the Dashboard until the instructor publishes it.
If your instructor indicates s/he HAS published the course, there are a few other cases where it still may not be available for you:
- If it is prior to the starting date of the course, your instructor must also change the start date for the course in Canvas in addition to publishing it. (We have a help page for faculty on this site for this.)
- While your current courses should be listed automatically on the Canvas Dashboard when you login and appear as a course card, there are times this will not happen. In that case, as a final check click on the Courses icon on the left side navigation bar, and then click the All Courses link at the bottom of that menu, as described above. This will display a screen listing all current courses, past enrollments, and future enrollments. You can then click on the "star" icon immediately to the left of the course number. The star will then be colored yellow, and this will create a course card on your Dashboard for that class. There is also some additional information on this Canvas documentation screen. (Note that you cannot enable the star icon for an unpublished course site.)
- If you are waitlisted for a course or have not officially registered for it, that course will not be listed for you until you are officially enrolled in the course and no longer on the waitlist.
- If you registered for the course very recently (i.e., a few hours ago or in the evening), it may not be reflected yet in Canvas. Student registration does not update instantly on the Canvas system. A process is run against registration records in courses a few times each day, so check again later in the day or the following morning.