Sometimes you want to give your students earlier access to your course so they can look at the syllabus and course prior to the official start date. You are able to change the start date earlier but not later than the default date but you will need to change both the course AND the section start dates. It is important for you to actually put in a start date rather than leave it blank as there is a chance it will autofill to whatever the official start date is on the next Canvas refresh cycle.
(Canvas refresh cycles are: 7:30am, 1:30pm, 6:30pm)
To change the course start date you will need ot go to the settings area of your course and alter the start date.
In this example students will only be able to access the course after March 14th and will continue to be able to access the course as their is no end date set.
You also need to alter the Section start date for each section in your course as this start date overrides whatever is put in for the course start date. To do this go to the Course > Settings > Click on the Sections tab > and click on one of the sections. From here you can click Edit Section to adjust the Start and End dates and hit Update section when finished.
In this example since it is set to March 18th and the course is set to March 14th The section start date will override that and those within this section will only be able to access the course on March 18th.
If a student is a part of multiple sections it will default to the latest possible time for them to start.
In this case, if a student listed for these three sections, two for March 14th and one for March 18th, they still will not be able to access the course until March 18th and the course will still show under future enrollments for them.