Current practice / best practice for setting course Start Dates?

Question

At my university, we set the Start Date for all courses to correspond with the date on which the academic semester begins — for example, our 16 week Fall semester begins on August 26 this year, so all courses for that semester have a default Start Date of August 26 at 12:00 AM (though individual instructors may modify the default date as needed).

What I'm wondering, though, is whether this is typical practice elsewhere? Does your institution set a default course Start Date that corresponds with the first day of classes? Or do courses open earlier? And was there any specific rationale driving that decision?

I ask because someone at my institution was wondering why we don't open classes earlier, vs. waiting to the first day of class.

Jenn.H.328 · Accepted Answer

This is a really great question! In my experience, it comes down to your organization's preferences. Most institutions I have worked with will open courses on semester start dates. I have only worked with a few institutions that have provided limited access to a course a week before as part of a "preview" period. They would often use release conditions to ensure the learner only had a preview of the first module of the course, for example.

I hope that helps a bit in understanding how/why some institutions do this.

Jennifer.W.973 · Accepted Answer

@Laura.O.689 Yes, we have course start dates set to the first day of the semester. Courses are also inactive by default, so students don't even see their courses listed on their homepage if instructors don't make their courses active earlier. I always recommend that instructors make their courses active as soon as possible and change the start date so that students can access the course a few days before the semester starts, so they can at least get the syllabus.