This service is for faculty and staff.
This guide is intended for faculty members with closed courses who have worked with the Registrar's Office to coordinate the Banner record for a student with an incomplete.
What is an Extended Section?
Every Canvas course has a default end date that normally lines up with the end of the term. Once a course is past this date, the instructor should not re-open the course for students. (Once a term "closes" in Canvas, which happens about two to three months after its classes ended, an instructor can no longer edit the end date.) If a student has a grade status of "incomplete" from the closed course an instructor needs to first reach out to the Registrar's office to coordinate the Banner record. Once that is done, they may request an extended section of the course using the instructions below, "How to Request an Extended Section".
Once the extended section is requested, The Canvas team will manually add both the student with the incomplete and the instructor to an extended section inside of the course to re-open the course for participation. The purpose of an extended section is to open a closed course solely for students with incompletes. By using the extended section, students who already completed the course will not be notified that the course is still open.
The extended section is inside of the course and the instructor and student will access the course exactly as they did the entire semester. The extended section is a way for the instructor and the student with the incomplete to continue working inside of the closed course without notifying students who have completed the course.
How to extend assignments and quizzes for individual students with incompletes
The Canvas team will not adjust any quiz/assignment dates, so it's still possible the student with the incomplete will be unable to do particular tasks in your course. If, for example, you have a Quiz that was set to be invisible/unavailable to ALL students during the second week of class, it will still be unavailable for the student with the incomplete even though the student now has access to work in your course. You can create exceptions to those assignments and provide an extended date if necessary. Canvas offers instructions on how to do that here: How to assign an assignment or quiz to individual students.
If you need help, Canvas offers 24/7 support including weekends via the "(?) Help" menu in Canvas on the left side purple navigation bar at the bottom.
Can I re-open the entire course?
We do not recommend an instructor re-opens the course for all students. If the course is re-opened after it has been closed, Canvas will notify all of the students in the course that it has re-opened. This usually leads to confused students reaching out to the instructor asking if they have unfinished work or asking to re-take quizzes/assignments.
How to Request an Extended Section
The faculty member should submit a ticket request to the Learning Management Systems (Canvas) or send a request to techdesk@stthomas.edu with the course ID, the student’s username or Banner ID, and the approximate time range of when the work will be performed. STELAR staff will manually add an Extended Section to the previous course, enroll the faculty member and the student(s), and set dates on it to open access for those enrolled in that section.
How to add more time to the extended section
If a student needs more time to finish the incomplete, instructors can edit the dates of the extended section. This needs to be done before the extended section closes.
To change the close dates of the section:
- Open the course "Settings"
- Select "Sections" from the top naviagtion bar
- Choose the section that has "_extended" attached to the course SIS ID.
- Select "Edit Section" from the right side navigation
- In the block next to "Ends" you can change the date
- Choose "Update Section"
If you need help, Canvas offers 24/7 support including weekends via the "(?) Help" menu in Canvas on the left side purple navigation bar at the bottom.
To report a problem or receive additional troubleshooting, please contact the
Tech Desk.