Instructor Support for Educational Systems

How do I use Manage Dates?

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You can use Manage Dates to view and change the availability of Course Content and Tools. This is especially useful if you want to set it up in bulk. If you want to know how to release a specific content item on a specific date, check out this article for the necessary steps.

Once you have set up a start date, the content item will be shown as 'hidden'. Please DO NOT click on the eye-icon. If you do, you will see a disclaimer that date restrictions are in place. Due to a bug in the system, even if you click 'cancel' these date restrictions will be deleted and the start date will not work anymore.

Brightspace supplier D2L is working on fixing this known issue.

Please note that when setting the dates, the release conditions of the content items will appear in the calendar. It is not possible to hide this.

  • The benefit of Manage Dates is that it allows you to change all the dates from one central place. This is useful when you have copied a course to a new semester or year. You can also see which items are visible to students and under what conditions they are visible.
  • You can use Bulk Edit Dates to move course components to the next period or semester. This option is also useful when you have imported a course or course components from a different course, because you now can easily set the dates of these components. 
  • Go to Course Tools in the navbar of your course
  • Click on Course Admin
  • Click on Manage Dates

Filter by Tool

  1. You can change the start date and end date of the entire course below Course Duration. Note: this will only make the course visible or invisible in Brightspace for students.
  2. Filter Specific Tools to show a list only with specific tools, such as Discussions, for which you want to set a date.
  3. Or, use the Advanced Filter Options to refine your search.

Check a box to search for:

  1. Name
  2. Due Date (Deadline)
  3. Start date
  4. End date
  5. Duration of the content
  6. Whether your course item is in the Calendar

Bulk Edit Dates or Bulk Offset Dates

By clicking on the check box(es) in the table, you can change more dates at once. To change everything you can check the box above the table.

Dates can be changed with Bulk Edit Dates or Bulk Offset Dates.

Bulk Edit Dates

By choosing one or more options from the list below, you can determine which dates can be changed (Set) or deleted (Remove).

  1. You can edit Due Dates
  2. Indicate Start Dates for when the Content will be available
  3. Specify End Dates for when the Content will no longer be available
  4. Change dates in the Calendar
  5. Press Save to keep your editting

Bulk Offset Dates

Due Date, Start Date, End Date or Other activity dates of the Course Content can be changed.

With Offset by direction and range you can shift the date(s) by moving them Forward or Backward, by a Range of Days and/or Hours.

With Calculate range between two dates you can also shift the date(s) by using a calculation of the amount of time between two dates.

In example 1) the dates are moved Forward, and in example 2) the dates are moved Backward.

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