Time Zone in Courses

[jschaffer]

Hello All,

Our school currently operates in Mountain Time Zone.  We want our courses to be standardized in that Time Zone so that when we open/close courses, assignments, and final grades, everyone is on the same page and working on the same clock.  As far as I can tell Central Time zone seems to be the default.  Is that correct?  I also could not find an API that would allow us to update a course's time zone.  Is that also correct?

Thanks for the help.

Jason

[Chris_Hofer]

Hi jschaffer​...

The time zone is set in a user's profile...not within a given course.  According to this Canvas Guide, How do I set a time zone in my User Settings?, "All dates and times throughout your Canvas courses are displayed according a course's respective time zone. However, you can set your own time zone for your user account and have your local time zone display throughout Canvas. Displaying dates in your local time may help you stay up to date on assignments and due dates, especially if your course time zone differs significantly from where you reside."

I hope this helps answer your question.  Please let me know if you have other questions about this...thanks!

[sgriffith · Accepted solution]

Hi jschaffer

In addition to  @Chris_Hofer  excellent answer, you can also change the default time zone for all courses in an account or for any course of which you are the instructor.

Here are the relevant guides/Instructions:

Instructor: How do I set a time zone for my course?

Admin: 612 - Account Settings on Vimeo (video has content relevant to this discussion at 1:00 in).

If you have admin access, click on the Admin button and select your account. Click on the Settings tab for your account and select the default time zone. It'll look something like this:

Hope this helps and let me know if I can clarify anything!

Thanks!

Sarah

[jschaffer]

So there is no way in Canvas to ensure that a course opens up at the same time across the board?  For instance, I want a course to open when the term starts which will be at midnight on a Sunday Mountain time. I cannot do that in Canvas?

Jason

[kona]

jschaffer, you can set the default for all courses in Canvas from the admin side of things, but I guess technically if an Instructor wanted to change the default time zone for their specific course they could. Do you see that as being a problem? We've been using Canvas since 2012 (and enroll online students from all over the US) and have never had a problem with an Instructor changing the default time zone for their course.

If this was really worrisome to you/your Institution, you could probably add some custom global javascript that hid the time zone option from faculty (we do this for the delete course button).

[jschaffer]

Kona,

That should work.  Do we do that at the term or account level? 

Jason

[kona]

Account level, you should be able to go to the admin side of Canvas, click Settings, and then adjust the Default Time Zone to Mountain Time (or whatever time zone you'd like).

[snihal]

Is it possible to set a Default Time Zone for a subaccount? I don't see the option under my settings page for the subaccount.

Thanks!

[AnkitDesai]

I have same question. Can we update the timezone for perticular subaccounts?