Time zones and deadlines

Kate.H.954

Hello Community,

I am reaching out to see if someone has a better solution for the time zones and time differences in the courses. We are currently running courses in 4 Canadian provinces (ADT, CST, MDT PDT time zones). Our office is in MDT.

We are constantly facing the issue of time zone differences and having to "translate" the deadlines (e.g. 11.59 PM local time) from our location to the other provinces. It's a lot of manual work in the Intelligent Agents, Dropboxes, Release Conditions, etc. It's also prone to human error, and it's going to be a bigger issue from the scalability perspective in the future if our program expands into more provinces.

I was just hoping to see how other nationwide programs are dealing with this, and how your deadlines are getting set.

Thank you so much, and I hope there is a creative solution :)

Kate

Chris.S.534

Hi Kate,

Hopefully the following is useful, you've possibly already explored the options below.

Create groups of Learners aligning with the 4 time zones in all courses
Some clients already do this for location/campus of enrolment in all course offerings

Option 1: Set the assessment activity in local time e.g. MDT time
Using the Special Access options to manage individualised due dates for group members of the other 3 time zones.

Option 2: Create 4 separate assessment activities each with a due date aligning with the local time
Release the activity to the respective timezone group
The Manage Dates tool could be used to edit the due dates in bulk if appropriate to use

Option 3: Standardise assessment availability and due dates across your Brightspace platform aligning to 'window' that will work for ADT, CST, MDT PDT time zones e.g. 8AM PDT - 8PM PDT

Another option is to force a learners timezone to align with MDT etc. but this of course creates additional issues and places the burden onto the Learner to resolve timezone issues - a non option if you like!

The option to set an availability and due date flag reflecting a users timezone - e.g. 6PM 'in user timezone' is a good one. If you haven't already done so please consider making a submission into the Product Idea Exchange

Fingers crossed community members have additional suggestions and ideas for you to consider.

Hope that helps!