Faculty choose when to publish courses at any time after initial course creation. Immediately after faculty publish the course, students will be able to access it, however they cannot submit assignments until several days before the start of the course. If the course is unpublished, it will still appear in Canvas under Courses > All Courses, but the course will not be accessible until published by the faculty.
Canvas Class Load Dates
Winter 2026
- November 3: course shells created in Canvas; faculty gain access
- December 23: earliest date students can participate and submit in courses
- January 2: first day of classes
Spring 2026
- November 3: course shells created in Canvas; faculty gain access
- January 10: earliest date students can participate and submit in courses
- January 20: first day of classes
Summer 2026
- April 2: course shells created in Canvas; faculty gain access
- May 22*: earliest date students can participate and submit in courses
- June 1*: first day of classes
*Official start dates to be announced. Article will be updated when the Academic Scheduling office finalizes the 2026-27 Academic Calendar.
Fall 2026
- April 7: course shells created in Canvas; faculty gain access
- August 14*: earliest date students can participate and submit in courses
- August 24*: first day of classes
*Official start dates to be announced. Article will be updated when the Academic Scheduling office finalizes the 2026-27 Academic Calendar.
General guideline
This general schedule is not exact, but does describe our current approach to scheduling LMS data loads.
- Winter term: Faculty typically gain access around the first week of November. Students typically gain access 10 days before start of term. These dates may be adjusted in coordination with Professional and Continuing Education.
- Spring term: Faculty typically gain access around the first week of November. Students typically gain access 10 days before start of term.
- Summer term: Faculty typically gain access around the first week of April. Students typically gain access 10 days before start of term. Note: our data feed from PeopleSoft treats all Summer sessions as one term, so we work off of the earliest session, however course sections will still have start and end dates governed by the data from PeopleSoft.
- Fall term: Faculty typically gain access around the first week of April. Students typically gain access 10 days before start of term.