Any way to favorite a course in Past Enrollments so it shows on the Dashboard (retroactively)?

Question

Hi all,

Faculty at our institution have asked whether a concluded course can be added back to the Dashboard after it has moved to Past Enrollments.

What we've verified so far (admin, tested via Act as User on a faculty account):

* Active enrollments: the star in Courses > All Courses works normally — tooltip reads "Click to add [course] to the courses menu," and the card appears on the Dashboard.
* Past Enrollments: the star control is not rendered at all for concluded enrollments, so there's no way to favorite retroactively.
* We know a course favorited before conclusion stays on the Dashboard — the gap is only favoriting after the fact.
* Checked root account Settings and Feature Options — found nothing that changes this.

Questions:

* Is there any account-level setting, feature flag, or API route (e.g., updating the user's favorites via the Favorites API) that allows favoriting a concluded course?
* If not — is this by design, and is the product team tracking it anywhere beyond idea 376524 ("Allow past enrollments to be added to course menu")?

Use case: faculty regularly return to concluded courses for material reuse, grade disputes/incompletes, and recommendation letters — one-click Dashboard access matters to them.

Happy to share validation screenshots. Thanks!

JeffreyMeyers · Answer

I've used something like five different LMSs, and Canvas is the only one that doesn't allow past courses on the dashboard. As a former faculty member, I find the choice bizarre. I constantly needed quick access to past courses, including for students with incompletes.

As an instructional designer, I regularly need to teach faculty how to find their old courses. The first semester change after we switched from Blackboard, faculty panicked about where their past courses went was our number one support question for quite a while.

james_whalley · Answer

@sudheerakella If you do want to try to get Instructure to change this functionality, feel free to Share a Contribution on the Canvas Roadmap.

dbrace · Answer

I understand the need for this type of functionality.

The general ideas for why it is not possible to "star" or "favorite" a course in the past are:

* depending on an institution's policies for archiving courses, whether favorited or not, everyone (even faculty) will eventually lose access to a previous course (I am referring to the US DOJ ruling on accessibility)
* after "unstaring" or "unfavoriting" a course in the past (except for accidents, which are a valid reason and can/does happen) why would you want to "star" or "favorite" a previous course?

My only recommendations are:

* encourage users to go to the "All Courses" list from the "Courses" button to access courses that are in the past
* after doing #1, bookmark the course (or email it to themself/themselves if they regularly use multiple computers or maintain a list in a Google Doc or Microsoft Word Online file)

Again, I can understand the desire for this functionality, but I do not see it changing from the way it currently is. It would be interesting to see if that feature idea goes any further.

-Doug