Course Availability

Course availability is determined by two factors. (1) The term/duration, set by the system administrator, determines whether the course is considered “current” in the Blackboard system. (2) The course Open/Closed status, controlled by the instructor, determines whether students can access a current course.

Understanding Course Dates

Courses in our Blackboard system are created with a default start and end date, also called the Course Duration. When today’s date falls within the the course duration, the course will appear in the list of “Current Courses” for all users. Student can only enter courses that appear when the Terms menu is filtered to Current Courses.

The default setting for the course duration varies by semester. The start date is automatically set as the day 4-weeks before the start of main campus classes and the end date is automatically set as the last day of the month after the end of the term. For example, Fall 2024 were set with a duration of 7/29/2024 through 1/31/2025.

All courses instructors and teaching assistance are able to edit the course duration. If you wish to adjust the duration, be sure that the start is set for the first day that you’d like students to view the course and the end date is set to the last day that you’d like students to view the course. Regardless of the availability settings below, a student will not have access to the course outside these dates.

On instructor request, administrators are able to set a custom duration for individual students for allowing a student to finish an incomplete course or access old assignments. To extended access, an instructor should send the student NetID, access date range, and reason to help@syr.edu.

Instructors interested in specifying course meeting dates should examine the course schedule features in the Course Calendar.

Opening Your Course for Students

Opening a course can only be done manually. Instructors can choose the day/time they open their Blackboard course(s) to students, but there is no feature to schedule course open/close dates in advance.

A course must be made available to students before they can view or access the course and its content. However, you may want to make a course unavailable while building the course or after a scheduled course has finished. You can choose to set your course availability using the Qwickly tool or through your Blackboard course. Using the Qwickly tool will allow you to change the course availability for multiple courses at one time. Using the Blackboard tool will require that you change the availability for each course separately.

If your course is unavailable, access is determined by an individual's course role. Blackboard administrators, instructors, course builders, teaching assistants, and graders can see and access unavailable courses from the My Courses tab and the course list, but the course is marked as unavailable. Students, however, can't access unavailable courses regardless of the course duration.

1 Understanding Course Dates
2 Opening Your Course for Students

If you would like to make a past term's course available to a single student to finish an incomplete, you can email help@syr.edu with a request. Please be sure to provide the student's name, SU email address, the course they should have access to and the dates that you want them to have access.

Set course availability using the Qwickly tool

From the institution page menu, select Tools.

Find and select the Qwickly Course Tools icon.

Select Course Availability from the menu

Search by name using the search field or select the appropriate filter to see only available or unavailable courses.

Use the toggles to make courses available or unavailable to students. You may need to refresh your LMS browser and Course Tools to see updates.

Set course availability through Blackboard course

All Ultra Courses by default are set to private. When you are ready to set the course available to students, select the Courses link from the global Blackboard menu (see image below) to access your course list. Open the three dot menu of the course you want to make available and select Open Course > Open to students (see second image below).

Alternatively, you can change your course's status on the Course Content page under Details & Actions. Click the Students can't access this course link and select open to students.

Mark a course as complete through Blackboard

You can choose to set your course to Complete when the course has ended, but you can no longer make changes to it. Students can access the content, but they can't participate in the course any longer. For example, they can't reply to discussions or submit assignments. Note that this option is only available for courses in the Ultra Course View.

Alternatively, you can change your course's status on the Course Content page under Details & Actions. Click the Students can access this course link and select make your selection.

Related resources:

Qwickly Course Tools User Guide