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
- Add Teaching Assistants and other course staff
- If applicable, merge multiple courses by cross-listing sections
- If applicable, copy Course Files and settings from a previous course
- Add course content
- Review Quercus Support Resources.
- Register for Quercus training sessions
1 week before the first class
Make course available by publishing course
During the course
- Export the Gradebook regularly for your record keeping (Note: letter grades are not included in the export)
- Download recordings made to Zoom Cloud within 120 days.
End of Term
- Users can no longer be added to
course sections via +People feature. Visit the instructions on how to add people to a course section after the end of term“.
- Instructors can no longer message students in the course via the Inbox tool.
- Export the Gradebook. (Note: letter grades are not included in the export)
- Export Course Content and save the course package to your computer or Microsoft 365 OneDrive
- Submit final grades to your department
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:
- In Settings select Course Details
- Scroll down to Participation
- If this is set to Term select Course from the drop-down menu
- Enter the new end date
- 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.