How Dates are Calculated for Copied Assignments
The Copy Course Materials feature offers you two options for copying dates—Use source dates if applicable or Roll the over to fit the destination term. Following are explanations of how dates are calculated for the destination course during a course copy.
The following three subsections explain how dates are calculated when you are copying course materials using the Use source dates if applicable option.
Unit dates are calculated as follows when using the Use source dates if applicable option:
If the destination term is the same as the source term, then all unit dates will be copied as-is.
If the destination term is different from the source term, the system will apply the following logic:
Identify all whole-term units so that they can be excluded from steps 2 and 2.a below. (These units will still be copied, but their dates will be set using the logic in step 2.b rather than 2.a.)
For all remaining units, determine whether all of those units' end dates are in the future. If that is the case, then take the following steps:
Set the destination units’ start and end dates to the source units’ dates.
For all units with the same start and end dates as the source term, set those units’ dates to be the same as the destination term.
Otherwise (if any unit end dates are in the past), set the destination units to cover the whole destination term.
Assignment dates are calculated as follows when using the Use source dates if applicable option:
If the assignment's due date is in the future, then all assignment dates will stay the same in the new assignment.
Otherwise (for past-due assignments), the assignment's due date will be calculated based on the following steps.
If the destination course section has any schedules, then the new assignment due date will be set to the final scheduled day.
Otherwise (if there are no schedules), then the new assignment’s due date will be set to the destination term's end date.
All other assignment dates will appear the same distance from the new due date as they were in the original assignment. For example, if a Rule Date was set to allow the assignment to open two days before the original due date, the new Rule will have a date set to two days before the new, calculated due date.)
Dates that are not related to units or assignments—for example, dates related to forum topics and posts—will be calculated as follows when using the Use source dates if applicable option:
If the date is in the future, the system will copy the date as is. If the date is in the past the destination date will be set to the destination term's end date.
The following steps explain how dates are calculated when you are copying course materials using the Roll them over to fit the destination term option.
For each date being copied, calculate its distance in time from the source term’s start date. For example, if an assignment has a due date of 1/21/2024 in a term starting 1/1/2024, then the time difference is 20 days later.
For the new date, calculate that same time difference from the destination term's start date. So, for the previous example, if copying into a term that starts on 6/5/2024, the 20 days will be added on to get a new due date of 6/25/2024.
If the newly calculated date would occur after the destination term's end date, then the date will just be set to the destination term's end. So, no calculated dates can ever occur outside the destination Term.
The only exception to this logic is for units that have an end date equal to the source term's end date. In this case, the destination unit's end date will be set equal to the destination term's end date. (This can only ever happen when copying from a shorter term to a longer one.)