Course Dates & Visibility

By default, students retain access to their eConestoga course shells for the duration of their time at Conestoga. Unless a course is manually disabled by the instructor, students only lose access to their courses when their network account is disabled, a few months after they graduate.

Start & End Dates

By default, all eConestoga course shells are built with a Start Date and an End Date.

	Start Date	End Date
When	3 days before the course's official start date. Official start dates typically fall on a Monday regardless of the day classes are held, so eConestoga courses usually open the Friday before the first class.	The course's official end date.
Editable by instructors	Yes	Yes
Affects student access	Yes - Students can't access the course before the Start Date	No - Courses that have ended move to "Past Courses" and are labeled as "Ended", but students retain full access to all content, assessments, and grades in the course, and can continue to complete assignments whose date settings allow it.

If your course contains content or assessments that your students should not see after the end of the semester, you can manually deactivate those items, or even your entire course shell.

Is My Course Visible?

Instructors can confirm whether a specific course is visible to students through the My Courses widget on the eConestoga homepage.

When you hover over any course’s tile, several icons will appear over it. The eye icon at the top left indicates your course’s current visibility status:

An example showing the visible and invisible icons on different courses in the My Courses tileset

An open eye indicates that the course is visible to students, and a crossed-out eye indicates that the course is not currently visible. Note that future-dated courses will continue to be hidden from students until three days before the course’s official start date.

Controlling Course Dates & Visibility

Instructors can manually open or close their course shells for students by making them Active or Inactive, or by adjusting their Dates.

Open your course and click Course Admin at the top.
Near the top of the list, click Course Offering Information
You will be taken to the settings for your course. You can then change your course's visibility in one of two ways:

Course Visibility: To completely turn the course on or off, scroll down the page until you locate the “Course Is Active” checkbox.

To open the course, check “Course is Active”.
To close the course, uncheck “Course is Active”.

Course Dates: To change when the course is visible, scroll down the page until you locate the “Start Date” and "End Date" settings.

To change either date, click on the currently-set date to bring up a calendar, and then click on your desired new date.
Unchecking the box beside "Course has start date" or "Course has end date" will remove that date completely; however, please note that it is not recommended to remove the End Date for any live course, as this will prevent the course from moving to students' "Past Courses" tab after the course is finished.

Scroll down and Save. Then, click your course's title at the top to return to your course's homepage.

End Dates on Course Content

While the course shell as a whole will typically remain visible to students forever, Instructors can manually add End Dates to content and assessments within their courses if they do not desire certain materials-- e.g., assignment answer keys-- to be available permanently.

Setting an End Date for a content Module

Setting an End Date on a Module within the Content area will restrict access to all Topics contained within it. Students will be able to see that the content items exist, but will not be able to click on them.

Go to the Content area of your course and click the Module's name in the Table of Contents on the left side of the screen.
Near the top of the module, click “Add dates and restrictions”
Specify an End Date
Click Update.

Setting an End Date for a content Topic

Setting an End Date on a specific Topic will restrict access only to that single Topic without affecting other documents around it.

Open the module that contains the Topic
Click the drop-down arrow beside the Topic’s title and choose “Edit Properties In Place”
Click “Add dates and restrictions”
Specify an End Date
Click Update.

Setting an End Date for Quiz review

By default, a student who has completed an eConestoga Quiz will only be able to see their final grade on that quiz once they’ve submitted it. However, instructors can use an optional tool called Submission Views to reveal additional information to students after they’ve completed a quiz, including the text of the questions and answer options, what that student answered for each question, and/or the correct answers for each question.

For more information about Submission Views, refer to our Guide to Quiz Submission Views.

If you have set Submission Views for one or more quizzes and do not wish for students to retain this information after the course is complete, we recommend adding an additional Submission View to your quiz that returns students to seeing only their overall score (with no question information) at the end of the course.

Go to Course Tools -> Quizzes
Click the drop-down arrow beside a Quiz’ title and choose “Edit”
Open the “Submission Views” tab
Click “Add Additional View”
Set the Date of the new view to the end date of the course; leave all other options at their defaults
Click “Save” at the bottom

This will need to be set up individually for each quiz in your course that has custom Submission Views.