Instructors frequently copy over course materials from recently taught courses, importing all course content and settings. This results in old assignment due dates being copied into the new course as well as gradebook missing/late policies. Instructors are confused when this results in 0's for students in their new course, despite the course not yet being opened for students. This problem remains even after the assignment due dates are adjusted. If the problem is not fixed before students participate, this also causes confusion and frustration for students who see 0 grades for the course. Additionally, if an instructor "fixes" the problem by setting the default grade for each assignment to null to clear out any zeros, the missing policies fail to function properly with the default grade overriding the policies.
While instructors could prevent the problem by removing due dates or policies prior to course import, many instructors are likely to miss this step. Solutions include not applying/activating policies until the course is published (giving instructors time to adjust due dates and prevent the zero's from auto-populating) or allowing an option to reset the gradebook prior to student work being submitted. Additionally, missing policies should override a default grade that was set to null.
