Moodle course shells are hidden from students when they are created. Making a course available or hiding it from students is managed by each instructor. Online courses are generally made available up to a week prior to the term start date, while on-campus courses can be opened any time. Students expect to be able to access their courses by the first day of the term, so if you plan to make your course available after that date, please notify your students to reduce their anxiety (and our help desk tickets!).

Course Visibility in Lists

In any listing of your courses, hidden courses follow courses that are available to students. On your landing page, titles of courses that are hidden are gray. In your dashboard, hidden courses are labeled as shown here at right.

Two filters, shown here below, make it easy to find hidden courses quickly in your Dashboard or My courses link:

1. Filter courses by Future.
2. Use the buttons in the lower right corner to star the course.

Make Your Course Visible to Students

When you are ready to make your course available to students, click on the Settings link at the top of the main course page. In the General options area, locate the field labeled Course visibility and use the pull-down menu to select Show. Scroll down and save changes.

In prior versions of Moodle, the hidden or visible status of a course could be discerned by checking the course name in the “breadcrumb” trail at the top of the main course page—hidden course names appeared in gray text and courses available to students were in red text. While we can't see the course name itself on the main course page, you can open an item in the course and check the breadcrumb trail there—if the course name appears in gray, the course is still unavailable to students; if it's red, it's visible to them. You can always tell if a course is available to students by checking in a list of your courses or by opening the Settings options in the course.