What are the correct ways to use the manage dates bulk offset tool calculate range between two dates

Question

Can the manage dates bulk offset tool calculate the range between two dates be used to convert dates from a longer class to a shorter class or vice versa?

For example, my institution offers 15-week, 12-week, 7-week, and 3-week classes with the same content. However, when I copied a 15-week course into a new shell, used the manage dates tool, and put the dates of a 12-week course for the range, it didn't work.  Unfortunately, the result had dates outside the beginning and end dates I entered as restrictions.  What are the ways that this tool should be used, and for what purposes?

Jennifer.W.973 · Answer

@Shelly.Robinson884 Just think of it as a calculator. It will count up the days between the dates you enter. So if you are working on building your summer course, you would put something like Monday 1/9/23 as the first date for this past spring semester and then Monday 5/15/23 for the upcoming summer semester. Then all the dates you had selected would be pushed forward by 126 days, which is the range that it calculated for you. You wouldn't need to manually count the days on a calendar. Let's say you had a quiz due in your class every Friday in the spring and wanted to do the same for summer. For the first quiz, it would take the due date of 1/13/23 and push it to 5/19/23 (because 1/13 plus 126 days is 5/19), and so on for all the quizzes you selected.

It works best when the semesters are the same length and start on the same day of the week. But you still have to double check some dates since you might not want due dates falling during Thanksgiving break, spring break, etc.

Shelly.R.237 · Answer

Jennifer, thanks for confirming that the tool will not work for classes with different lengths.   I wonder what the "Calculate range between dates" is intended to represent if it is not the start and end dates of the course.   Also, what are the ways that this tool should be used, and for what purposes? Can you provide some examples?

Shelly Robinson

Jennifer.W.973 · Answer

@Shelly.Robinson884 The From and To dates under Calculate range between two dates are not intended to be the start and end dates of one course. It just determines how many days are in between the two dates you input, so you would typically want to put in the start dates of two semesters that are the same length. For semesters that vary in length, you'd need to manually figure out how many days you want to offset and just enter the number under Offset by direction and range.