In a Canvas course there are three levels of publishing: course-level, module-level and content-level. This gives you more options when you decide what students can view and not. When you work on content, e.g. a page or an assignment, you can finish at your own pace before you publish and make it accessible for the students.

Published means students can view.
Unpublished means students cannot view.

Course-level

If the course is not published on course-level, it will not appear in the students’ Dashboard! The button for course-level publishing is located in the upper right corner of the course’s start page (click Home to get there from another course page):

Status:

To publish the course, click Publish.
To unpublish the course (close), click Unpublish.

NB Course-level publishing alone does not make the course viewable! You have to publish on module-level and content-level as well. See the next section for how to do so.

Module-level and content-level

In the Modules overview, it is easy to see what content and which modules are published. You can change the status by clicking these buttons:

Unpublished: Published:

Modules overview in a course. Both modules and content are marked as published/unpublished, to the right of the title. Published elements are marked with a green circle with white checkmark and unpublished elements with an empty circle with diagonal line.

NB If the content of a module has been published, but not the module, the students can not access. Make sure you publish both module and content.