Course Life Cycle

The Quercus course life cycle is a timeline of events a course goes through from creation to delivery to archived (read-only*). This resource will help you plan to build, update, and backup your Quercus course. Where applicable, tasks suggested here are linked to a relevant support resources that will help you complete that task.

Timeline (approximate)

Automated Quercus Events

Suggested Instructor Tasks

4 months before the start of term

  • Courses are created on Quercus
  • Instructors and Students are automatically enrolled into courses from ROSI
  • If you don’t see your course on Quercus, refer to Instructor Quercus Checklist

1 week before the first class

Make course available by publishing course

During the course

End of Term

1 month after the end of term

  • The course is placed in a read-only* state for Students, TAs and Designers.

1 year after the end of term

  • The course is placed in a read-only** state for Instructors

* Read-only for Students means that the course is not available for submitting assignments, posting discussions, or any other action-based task within a course. Students will no longer receive notifications for the course updates.

** Read-only for Instructors means that the course is not available for editing items, uploading files, grading, or any other action-based task within a course.

Courses That Run Beyond ROSI Sessions

For courses that run longer than the ROSI-defined term length, instructors can override the default term end date in Quercus if it has been less than one year since the course’s end date. If the course has entered Read-Only state for instructors, please reach out to your Divisional Support Contact for assistance with changing your course dates.

To enter a new end date:Choose Course and set start and end dates

  1. In Settings select Course Details
  2. Scroll down to Participation 
  3. If this is set to Term  select Course from the drop-down menu 
  4. Enter the new end date
  5. Select Update Course Details to save your changes

Note: If the course Participation is set to Term, the dates displayed in the Start and End boxes show the student participation window offsets, and not the term dates.

Contact your Divisional Support representative for assistance with overriding default course end dates and visit the Canvas page on Changing Course Dates for more information.

Teaching Assistants' Training Program

For information on graduate student and Teaching Assistant professional development and job training, please visit the TATP for resources, events and more.

Scholarship of Teaching and Learning

Enroll in the SoTL Hub to access resources, share ideas and engage with your U of T community.

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