About Course Availability
A course must be made available, or set to open, before students enrolled in the course can view or access the course and its content. However, you may want to make a course unavailable, or closed, during the building process or after a scheduled course has finished.
If your course is unavailable, access is determined by the 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, when they're marked as unavailable. Students cannot access unavailable courses regardless of the course duration.
Set Course Availability
There are a couple of ways to set course access and availability.
Option 1: From the Bb Homepage, Courses Tab
From the Courses tab, click the 3 dots on the course card, then Course Settings.
Option 2: From Within The Course
From within a course, click on Course Settings in the upper right corner of the course. Note: the current availability status of the course is indicated to the right of Course Settings as shown in the image below. This is example, the course is closed, or unavailable, to students.
Course Settings
Regardless of how Course Settings is accessed, from the Courses tab on the Bb homepage or within the course itself, the below menu is provided with two options: to open or close the course to students or to mark the course Completed.
Image 1: Course Status is controlled by radio buttons labeled Open and Closed within the Course Settings page.
Explanation of Course Setting Options
Open Course
If selected, the course is open and accessible to students.
Close Course
If selected, the course is unavailable/inaccessible to students.
Complete Course
You can set your course to Complete when the course has ended, but you can no longer change it. Students can access the content but can't participate in the course any longer. For example, they can't reply to discussions or submit assignments. When a course is complete, you can change the course back to open or private.