Open or closed course
In Canvas, you can as teacher or course coordinator choose how visible your course should be: only for registered students, for those with a KTH-account, or public (open for everyone). This page contains information on how you change the setting for visibility.
The three different visibility settings
In Canvas, there are three different visibility settings for courses:
- “Course”. Only visible for students in the course room. This is the default setting.
- “Institution”. The course is visible for anyone with a KTH-account.
- “Public”. The course is open for anyone, even those without a Canvas account. These courses will show up in search engines, such as Google.
Courses that have their visibility set to “Institution” or “Public” are called open courses. You as a teacher decides the visibility setting based on the course's needs.
Read more about how you change the visibility settings: How do I customize visibility options for a course? (community.canvaslms.com) .
Important to choose visibility consciously
Consider the following before you make any changes to the visibility:
- Verify that you have the permission to use all media and all material in the course as an open course. More information on how you find free teaching material can be found on the page Creative Commons, Copyright, OER and teaching material .
- Verify that no personal data is shown in the visible areas of the course. More information about this can be found in the course GDPR@KTH (canvas.kth.se) , which is accessible for all teachers at KTH.
- Read more about what will be accessible for each setting: How do I customize visibility options for course content? (community.canvaslms.com) . It is important to read through the PDF-file "Canvas Course Visibility Options PDF" which can be found on this page. You need to be absolutely sure of what your choice means.
Inform the students about login
Students do not have to log in to have access to all material in an open course, but they will not be able to submit assignments, quizzes or participate in discussions. Only students that are logged in and registered on the course can actively participate in the course. The login does not happen automatically on open courses if students access it through “Courses” in the personal menu (the grey menu at the top of KTHs webpage and Canvas).
We recommend that you as a teacher remind your students to log in to the course, by clicking the “Log in” in the global Canvas menu (i.e. in the menu where they find “Dashboard”).
Curious on which open courses KTH offers?
The list of open courses at KTH