Course start and end date relative due dates. Ie being able to set up a course with due dates that are say “1 week + start date” etc. And being able to added dates to texts and instructional content that change relative to when the course is launched or ends. Say like having some persistent variables that can be passed through from settings to the text editors. Like a datetime variable.
In regards to the “datetime” type implementation, I was more thinking about how for some text fields, it is nice to write in a deadline of a part of the course to remind learners as they go through the content without needing to check the dates page. Right now, I would have to manually update these inclusions of dates for future runs, but if it were tied back to a global variable, then I could spend time on updating problems and content rather than dates and text for re-runs
Interestingly I think this work was partially done with the introduction of the edx-when service to power individual due date extensions (IDDE / the “Extensions” tab in the Instructor Dashboard) as well as the personalized learner scheduled (PLS) the feature that lets learners in self paced courses see personal relative dates and have the ability to shift them into the future. The PLS work is available both on web and mobile apps.
That being said, I think I recently learned (in the past 6 months) that the PLS work (and maybe IDDE / Extensions work) isn’t… default on in Tutor? Perhaps this has changed recently but I haven’t checked.
That all being said I think relative date storage is a smaller project (as I understand it) to achieve now that edx-when exists, but I’m sure I’m simplifying the requirements here.
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Relative Date Storage & Entry Options**
I can imagine a course level setting that lets you pick specific dates or relative dates as the way you directly input in course dates, so that whether edx-when is storing relative dates as I believe or not, you’d be able to surface to educators either date input option in Studio. We’d need to make sure the “expected course duration” field that i think might not be in Studio and was only added to Discovery / Publisher is pulled into course authoring metadata as well since I think that helps power the relative dates for self paced courses. Course Start Date + Course End Date might be all you need for instructor paced courses regarding dates but with self paced courses the expected duration for learners within a course offered / open for a year or two allows for meaningful personalized dates.
Re-Run Date Adjustments
Technically separate from the relative date storage and entry options above, we should improve the way we reset / adjust dates in course re-runs rather than just removing dates as we do now.