Assignments dates when using a Topics format

Assignments dates when using a Topics format

by Claudia Morgan -
Number of replies: 2

I apologize if this has already been asked and answered, but I could not find anything in my search of this forum.

We are piloting Moodle by converting what used to be correspondence (print-based) courses into an electronic format.  These courses will be open-enrollment, that is students can enroll at any time and have up to six months to complete the course.  For that reason, we are using the Topics format, as that seems to suit our needs.

So far the migration has gone swimmingly.  However, as I go back to review courses that have been converted, I notice that Moodle is indicating that assignments are late (by highlighting them with red), even though we have indicated -- via Topics format -- that dates are not important.

Must we go back and change every date to 2010 or something like that or is there an easier fix?  I hope it is the latter as the amount of change would be enormous to my staff.

Thanks in advance for any and all help (including -- "on page nn, you will see the answer to your question"   blush)

Claudia

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     Claudia Morgan

     Senior Academic Director

     UC Berkeley Extension Online

     http://learn.berkeley.edu

 

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In reply to Claudia Morgan

Re: Assignments dates when using a Topics format

by Gustav W Delius -

Using the topics format does not mean that due dates on assignments are now ignored. The week and topics formats only differ by how the sections on the course home page are labelled.

If you don't want to change all due dates by hand and if you are comfortable with modifying data directly in the database, you could do it for all of them at once. An SQL command like

UPDATE mdl_assignment SET timedue = '2222222222'

should do it. You may also want to modify all due date in the event table:

UPDATE mdl_event SET timestart = '2222222222' WHERE eventtype = 'due'

Of course you should only mess with the database after making a backup.

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In reply to Claudia Morgan

Re: Assignments dates when using a Topics format

by Marc Dastous -

This is so interesting, I have the same question!  Dates are not important to me in some of the classes and it looks very unprofessional to have due dates 6 years out.

Would it be possible to but a check box in the Setting Page for each course that would disable the due dates function for that course?

Just a thought.

Marc

PS.  No,  I do not feel comfortable messing with the dbase.  Everything works great right now, I don't want to "fix" it.

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