Every component of a course can be controlled by Start, End, and Due Dates. This can help keep your students on a pace you think is appropriate and also give you time to develop or finalize different pieces of the course while still showing it as part of the overall course expectations. 

  • Start Date: Setting a Start Date limits students' ability to access the item. 
    • For example: In a Quiz, the students can see the name of the quiz and click on it, but the "Start Quiz" button doesn't show until the Start Date. 
  • End Date: This ends the students' ability to access an item. 
  • Due Date: This doesn't affect students' visibility or access to an item, but is does give them a deadline in the course calendar tool. Additionally, it allows you, as an instructor, to see assignments that were submitted "late." If you allow late work but have a consequence in your syllabus (like a percentage off), this gives you an easy indicator for whom to adjust the grade in the gradebook. 


When creating quizzes, the Due Date option is not available in the Restrictions tab, only the Start & End Date are available. If you want to set a due date with a quiz, you'll need to edit it after you've linked it to content as a topic. 


Dropboxes have all three options (start, end, and due) available. 


Discussions have slightly different options for student visibility. They don't offer a due date, but you can limit the visibility of a discussion for a specific date range or unlock a discussion for a specific amount of time. Again, if you link a discussion into a topic in a content module, you can edit the topic's start, end and due dates and restrictions. 


Steps to Add Due Date to Quiz or Discussion Content Topics

  1. In the Content area, click on the module or submodule you want to add the quiz to. 
  2. Click on "Add Existing Activities" and choose "Quiz" or "Discussion"
  3. Select your quiz or discussion.
  4. In the content topic you've just created, click on the dropdown arrow and choose "Edit Properties in Place." Here, you can add start, end, and due dates to your quiz or discussion topic. 
  5. Click "Update."

If you have several content topics you need to restrict with dates, you can do that more quickly using the Bulk Edit option in the Content tool.