[Modules] Combining Publishing and Assign to Dates Function

[hibernated]

Problem statement:

As any good instructors would do, they double check or even triple check their contents before releasing/publishing to their students. With the current platform, it requires two steps for contents to be published.

1. Instructors set up the Assign To dates, but the contents remain unavailable.
2. Instructors need to manually publish each module or each module content. With most online courses, new weekly modules are set to be available after a certain day/date/time, such as Monday at 12:00AM. To ensure that the modules are available the next morning, instructors now need to publish them early, way prior to the Assign To dates. Students will receive notifications for anything that's published. However, when they get to the site, they learn that it's not available until a certain date/time. Students find this very confusing and frustrating. This also bothers almost all the instructors I have spoken with at my institution.

Proposed solution:

Combine the Publish and Assign To dates function - Once instructors set the Assign To date/time, that's also the publish time. The selected modules/contents will be automatically published/released at the assigned dates/times. Students will receive notifications only after the selected dates/times.

User role(s):

instructor