Align due dates for a course associated with a blueprint course to the course start date

[Carter41]

Is there a way for due dates in an associated course (the child course of a blueprint course) to automatically align to the term start date? Otherwise, we would have to manually adjust the due dates for every discussion, assignment, and quiz in all of our associated courses every term. Thanks in advance!

[gnoack]

Hi @Carter41

Can't you make the date adjustments in the blueprint course and then push the changes out to the child courses?

If not, then I think you will have to make the changes manually. You might consider simply importing content instead of a blueprint course. Importing allows you to adjust the dates based on the term start and end dates.

[Carter41]

Thanks, @gnoack for the reply and suggestions. We are building a catalog of courses every term that will run a handful of times a year, so our catalog will consistently be growing.

The idea is to have one master/blueprint course for each course title and that course would run every term as an associated course with updated due dates and possibly some content updates. Say by the end of the year we have 30 courses, that would mean I would have to manually update the due dates for all 30 courses every term moving forward. Hope that makes sense! Thanks again.

[gnoack · Accepted solution]

Hi @Carter41

I think I understand.

I my opinion, the only reason to use a Master Course is to have the ability to lock content from being edited by the instructor and to be able to update content to several courses at the same time, especially while the course is being taught. If you don't need to do these things, then using a course shell as a template that you import from each term would be a bettor workflow because you can use the import tool to adjust due dates.

If you do need to lock content and want to update content to multiple live courses, could you combine using a Master Course and a template? In the master course you would have only the content that you want to lock and that you may want to update. For example, help pages, tech requirements, the syllabus. The template would have the rest of the content and due dates that you import. When you import from the template, you can use the adjust dates to make the setup easier.

[arampe5]

Hi there,

I came across your post as I'm trying to solve a similar issue. Were you able to find a good solution? I am stuck at the best way to duplicate course content each time the identical course runs - but am also very concerned about dates. Thanks so much for any best practices you've discovered!

[Carter41]

I ended up using a master Blueprint course, manually create the associated course shell each term, and then sync them together. Finally I manually adjust the due dates of the assignments and discussions for each module in the associated course. It's not ideal but it works for now. My concern is that this won't be feasible once our catalog really grows. We are offering additional courses every term so this will quickly add up.