Forum LAMS for Tech-Heads - General Forum: Re: Re: Time finish function in Submit files tool

By: Ernie Ghiglione

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Ah, ok.

Time is an different with LAMS.

When you design a sequence, you can't put hard deadlines in the sequence, like "Open this gate on March 8th, 2011" because the idea is that sequences can be recycled and be used many times.

So in Author, we have used relative times, "Open this gates X days after the lesson has started". And that has shown to be a bit confusing for some people.

However, for this, I propose that instead of setting this in authoring time, we do this in monitor.

This means that when you get to the activity in monitor, there would be an option that prevent the students to upload files after a set date... in this case since the sequence is running, you should be able to enter a specific date: March 10, 2011. (BTW, do we need time too?).

How does that sound?

Thanks,

Ernie

Posted by Ernie Ghiglione

By: Daniel Schneider

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I think that the teacher ought to be able to set this as you suggested in the Monitor.

Actually, the question just came up today with a teacher on the phone. The current alternative is to use a manual gate, since hard coding let's say 14 days from start is not a good option in academia. Most teachers (not professional designers) will produce the sequence a few days before the lessons starts. Then they may delay start of the sequence and/or make changes and forget to adjust. Some deadlines on the other hand may depend on external factors, e.g. end of term, mid-term or whatever.

Posted by Daniel Schneider

By: Spyros Papadakis

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Hi all,

This is a real need. Some times you need an activity to start and finish in a specific period of time.

First, I would like to say that from Author view we have used relative times:

"Lock file submitting DD Days, HH Hours, and MM Minutes, after the lesson has started".


Second, I would like to say that from Monitor view it is necessary to be able to re-schedule it.

This means since the sequence is starting, you see a specific date and time: March 10, 2011 18:30 and the monitor should be able to change this date and time.

Generally it would be very usu full if there exist statistics (in log-file or in a Monitor tab) with the Date and Time of learner's starting, finishing and re-opening all the activities.

At the moment we have only the time they had spend in each activity but is not enough to facilitate the learners.

Spyros

Posted by Spyros Papadakis