As an instructor, you can publish or unpublish an assignment in a course. Unpublished assignments are invisible to students and excluded from grade calculations. You can manage the state of all assignments on the Assignments Index Page, or you can manage each assignment individually.

Note: If you use Modules in your course and add an Assignment to a Module, please be aware that the state of the Module overrides the state of all module items. You may want to consider leaving Assignments unpublished until you are ready to publish the entire Module.

Open Assignments

In Course Navigation, click the Assignments link.

View Status of All Assignments

On the Assignments Index page, you can view the status of each assignment. Green icons indicate the assignment is published [1]. Gray icons indicate unpublished assignments [2]. You can change the status of an assignment by toggling the published and unpublished icons.

Publish an Assignment

To publish an assignment, click the assignment’s unpublished icon. The hover text will confirm you want to publish the assignment.

Unpublish an Assignment

To unpublish an assignment, hover over the assignment's published icon and view its status. If the assignment can be unpublished, the hover text will confirm you want to unpublish the assignment [1]. Click the icon to confirm. Assignments with student submissions cannot be unpublished, and the hover text will notify you accordingly [2].

View Status within an Individual Assignment

Within individual assignments, the assignment status is shown next to the assignment name.

Publish an Assignment

To publish an assignment, click the assignment’s Publish button. The button will change from gray to green.

Unpublish an Assignment

To unpublish an assignment, hover over the published button for the assignment and view its status. If the assignment can be unpublished, the hover text will confirm you want to unpublish the assignment, and the button will change from green to red. Click the button to confirm. Assignments with student submissions cannot be unpublished.

Assignments Student View

Students cannot see any of the actions involved with publish status, such as published and unpublished icons and setting icons. Students will only see published assignments, which are posted in gray text.