Section end dates no longer overriding course end dates?

[mzimmerman]

For quite a while, we have accommodated students with "Incomplete" in a class by adding a new section within the class, adding the student to that section, and setting the section to have an extended end date that is past the default course/term end date.

Up until recently, that worked fine, allowing instructors to put new due/availability dates on quizzes and assignments for those students based on the "Incomplete" section end date rather than the course end date.

We've just discovered, though, that now students in those sections can no longer take quizzes if the course end date is passed, even if the section end date is not.  These students now get a "The quiz is not available because the course is concluded" message.

Has anyone else found this behavior?  I suspect it's a change from a recent update, we don't know which one...

[Hildi_Pardo]

Hi,

Was the new section added Before the course ended?     And did the section have both Start and End dates entered?   I've found that sometimes if one date is entered, but not the other, sometimes a setting doesn't work quite right.    

It's possible you may need to submit this to Canvas as a ticket...

[Nancy_Webb_CCSF]

We use the same method for Incompletes as you do, @mzimmerman .  But besides creating a new section in the class with the Incomplete dates, we also change the course end date in Settings, on the Course details tab. That will take care of students taking quizzes, since probably your school has checked "Restrict students from viewing quiz questions after course end date" in Account settings.

For us, the section end date means that students can no longer access the class, so anyone not in the Incomplete section can't enter or do work. There are so many settings that affect student access!

[hesspe]

@mzimmerman We recently experienced the same thing, andregarding @Nancy_Webb_CCSF  hypothesos, we do not have  "Restrict students from viewing quiz questions after course end date" set in Account settings.  Have you submitted a ticket?

[Nancy_Webb_CCSF]

@hesspe, we haven't had any reports of students in our Incomplete sections not being able to take tests. I just checked a couple of students and they have successfully taken quizzes.  But, I did edit the course end date as well as add them to the extended incomplete section.

We've found that if the course end date is left in the past, that teachers can't set an available until date after it.  A good reason to extend the course end date.  Doing some testing, a student is able to take a quiz even with the course end date in the past, as long as the section date and availability dates allows access.

Would the issue your students are having involve new quizzes rather than classic? I wonder if you have to assign it specifically to the incomplete section.

[mzimmerman]

When we are adding an "Incomplete" section with extended dates, we add both the student and the instructor, so that the instructor has permissions to change things in the course.

[CesarMoore]

start dates determine the default dates when users can have read-only or read/write access to a course. When the term, course, and section have all reached their respective end dates

[hesspe]

We've decided that in our case it was an anomaly that we can't explain or reproduce.  Since this episode, we have continued to use Extension sections with the desired starting and ending dates and without changing the Course End date, and it thus far has worked as before, i.e. fine.  We don't like to change the course end date because it puts formerly concluded courses back on the student dashboard and may result in their getting unhelpful notifications. 

[chriscas]

One tip I've found in our experience is when you create the "extended" section for the incomplete, make sure you set the start date as the original one for the course.  if the course started Sep 1 and ran to Dec 31, and you set up an extended section from Jan 1 - Feb 28, Canvas seems to throw fits as it can't put those two things together in it's logic when doing differentiated assignments.  You'd want to set the extended section up as going from Sep 1 to Feb 28 to avoid this issue.  And as always, make sure to check the override box when setting up the section, otherwise the term dates would still take precedence (as far as I've always understood it).

-Chris