You can require a learner to complete an activity before a specific date & time by setting a deadline. Deadlines will automatically display in the learner's own time zone and time format (12-hour or 24-hour).
In this article, we'll explore how deadlines work and how they appear to learners as well as how to set deadlines.
How deadlines work
Deadlines will cause activities to become locked, and learners will not be able to complete activities that have an overdue deadline. Activities that are overdue will be indicated in the course summary page.
It's important to consider how you want your deadline to work for your learners. Will you allow learners to submit late, after the deadline? If so, will you adjust deadlines individually, or will you open activities to all learners? If the learners miss the deadline, will they not be allowed to submit? Do you want to keep a record of learners who submitted late? Consider your course design and how you plan to facilitate deadlines with your learners.
Notifications for learners
About 24 hours before a deadline, learners will receive a notification that there is a deadline approaching. This serves as a reminder to log into Eduflow to complete the activity.
Adjusting deadlines
After a deadline passes, learners will be locked from completing the activity unless an instructor either adjusts the deadline rule on the activity's settings for all learners or adjusts the deadline for the individual learner on the Summary page.
How activities with deadlines appear in the course to learners
Decide how activities with deadlines will appear to learners after the deadline has passed. There are two main options:
Learners can see activities that are locked due to deadlines in the course sidebar with a completion rule.
Learners cannot see activities after the deadline passes in the course sidebar - the activities become invisible to learners with a visibility rule.
Example: An overdue deadline
Example: An overdue deadline
An overdue deadline that's set as a completion rule will appear to learners in the course sidebar. They will see the indication that the activity is overdue with a red x icon and they will see a message that "You missed the deadline for this activity".
If you do not want learners to see the activity after the deadline passes, you can choose to set a Visibility rule instead. Learners won't see the activity in the course sidebar. This may be helpful if you don't want learners to participant in the activity or even know about the activity after the deadline passes.
More often, instructors will choose to set a Completion rule with deadlines so that learners can see the activity. In this way, learners know they missed something and they need to reach out to instructors to request an adjustment or extension.
How to set a deadline
Click on Settings on the activity to open the slide-in menu.
Choose Completion (if you want learners to still see the activity after the deadline passes) or Visibility (if you want the activity to be invisible to learners after the deadline passes).
Select + Add rule and choose Deadline.
Use the drop down calendar to choose the date & time for your deadline.
Note that the deadlines will use your current time zone on your device, and you can adjust the time format to 12-hour or 24-hour in User settings.
Once the rule saves automatically, you can exit the settings menu and you'll see the deadline indicated on the bottom of your activity page.
You can change deadlines at any time, even after they've passed. Use the settings menu to adjust deadlines for everyone. You can either extend a deadline to a new date & time or remove the deadline using the trash icon.
If you only want to offer changes to deadlines for some learners, you can adjust the deadline for individual learners on the Summary page.