I need to set up a Q&A forum that is open for 4 weeks. After 2 weeks, students need to have responded to the initial questions posted by the course facilitator. That leaves students with another 2 weeks to respond to each other's posts and have a good discussion. It seems there is no way to set a due date for the students' initial response, nor to set a final date to end the discussion (except by using Restrict Access which also prohibits students from reading past posts, not just writing new ones). I really don't want to have to manually change role permissions during a course. What alternatives are there?
Is a software fix really the best solution? Good directions might be the best, I think. It would allow for greater flexibility. The problem with creating software limits is that it makes modifying things more cumbersome, and modifications are bound to be needed.
Thanks Dan. I thought about this but it gets tricky when there are multiple markers/graders, some of whom are going to apply penalties for overdue work and others are not. (Doesn't help that our faculty is global, and some are in partnerships that have their own rules.)
There also seems no way to set a date for final forum posts whilst still leaving the discussions open for later reading; one would manually have to prevent the Student role from replying to discussions on that day. Why can't we just set it up in advance by having a due date just like for assignments?
The functionality you describe is sort of what the workshop module does, including separate dates for submissions and assessment. Have you looked at it?
Thanks, but we don't want peer assessment, just discussion. We prefer the Q&A type forums so each student has to answer before seeing other students' answers.