Course Availability

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 Set course availability using the Qwickly tool
2 Set course availability through Blackboard course
3 Mark a course as complete through Blackboard

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.

When a course is complete, you can change the course back to open or private. Return to your course and in the Details & Actions panel, select the Students can view content, but can't participate link. Make the appropriate selection in the pop-up window.

Note that if a course has an end date, and the end date passes, then students can't access the course any longer. Hence, if you complete a course and open it again after the end date, students won’t be able to access it.

If you return to the Courses page and don't see all the options/changes in a course's menu after making the change, refresh the browser page.

Related resources:

Qwickly Course Tools User Guide