How come the lock date cannot be before the due date on assignments

[sochacjs]

Assignment Help Needed

[Stef_retired]

 @sochacjs  Welcome to the Canvas Community! By "lock date," do you mean the "Available until" date? Students are able to submit and resubmit an assignment until the due date, after which it displays as late; students can continue to resubmit, even after the due date passes, until the "available until" date.

I'm not able to come up with a use case where an instructor would want to lock students' ability to submit an assignment before the due date. What would be the purpose of a due date, then, and what pedagogical purpose would those extra days serve?

Could you elaborate on what you're hoping to accomplish?

Thanks.

[sochacjs]

Maybe there is another way to do what I want. I want the students to be able to download the pdf for the assignment until 4 hours before the due time. This prevents them for starting too late on the assignment.

Jim

http://educ.jmu.edu/~sochacjs/

http://educ.jmu.edu/~sochacjs/PersonalThoughts.html

[Stef_retired]

 @sochacjs , delivering course activities through a module progression would get you closer to this: you could require students to complete the module containing the PDF before being able to move on to the module containing the assignment itself. Students would have to at least view the PDF before they can proceed to the module that contains the assignment itself. The missing piece is that you can't put a close date on that standalone module. You'll find detailed instructions in How do I add prerequisites to a module?  

An alternative might be to create a standalone no-submission assignment that does not count toward the final grade that contains only the PDF. You could set that one to have availability until four hours before the due/lock date for the actual assignment. You could use this in a module progression as well.

I wonder if others have come up with a creative way to do this?

[sochacjs]

Thanks. Those are fine workarounds. It seems like canvas should allow the instructor to set the dates as wanted with just a warning if it does not seem ok.

Jim

http://educ.jmu.edu/~sochacjs/

http://educ.jmu.edu/~sochacjs/PersonalThoughts.html