There are three types of Canvas courses: 

Canvas Course Shell

Banner generated courses created by the Registrar's Office which contains a student roster. 

  • Use course shells to teach your course.

Canvas Development Shells

Course space to prepare materials before your Canvas Development Shell has been created in Banner. The contents of development courses can be copied to the "real" (created by the Registrar which contains student roster) course space when you are ready. Development courses are deleted three years from the creation of the course. 

  • Use to develop your course.
  • Use development shells to experiment, learn and play in Canvas.

To request a Canvas Development Shell, complete the request form.

More about Canvas Course Shells
Course shells for the upcoming semester are automatically created 45 days prior to the start of the semester. Courses added to the schedule after the initial creation of course shells will appear in Canvas once the course has been added to Banner.

Any course that is cancelled in Banner will be disabled in Canvas and will no longer be available to any user enrolled in the course.

Enrollments are managed automatically in Banner. Instructors are assigned to a course shell in Banner. Students are added to a course shell by Banner, two weeks prior to the course start date.

Instructors may add teaching assistants or co-instructors by asking their Department administrative coordinator to add the person through Banner.

Students must be registered for a course to be able to access the course. Students who register for a course after the first day of the semester will be added to their Canvas course once the registration is reflected in Banner and the course enrollment script updates.

Instructors will have immediate access to course shells once the shells have been created. The blank shell will appear on the instructor’s course listing in Canvas, where they may create course content, add content from a previous semester’s shell, or copy from a development shell.

Students are added to courses two weeks before the start of the term. Until the course is published, students will not see the course on their Canvas Dashboard. Additionally, items within the course must be published before students can access them, such as Modules, Discussion Boards, and Assignments.

Students should not begin participating in the course, such as submitting an assignment or contributing to a discussion topic, until the first day of class, per Financial Aid regulations governing semester start dates.

In Canvas, courses conclude at the end of a term. When the course is concluded, the course is only viewable in the Past Enrollment section of the Courses list in the Canvas global navigation menu. Students can only view these past enrollment courses as ready-only.

Faculty have full access to concluded courses for the purposes of submitting grades two weeks after the term is concluded. Then, Faculty have read-only access to past enrollment courses, but retain the ability to copy course content to other Canvas shells. A concluded course remains accessible in Canvas, in a read-only state, for students and Faculty for 3 years.