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UCF Due Date Changer

 
November 2017

The Effectiveness of the LTI Integrated Due Date Changer

University of Central FloridaIn September 2017, Hurricane Irma threatened inclement weather for all of Florida. According to forecasts, the hurricane center would travel right through Orlando. Florida’s government declared that all public universities focus on storm preparation, which required the University of Central Florida (UCF) to stay closed for a week in the wake of the storm. In concert with the campus closing, online classes also postponed coursework requirements, with classes resuming on Monday, September 18. The Due Date Changer app was being piloted at the time, but with the great feedback from our testers and the unavoidable circumstances, it was pushed out to all online courses.

How it helped faculty members?
Faculty had to adjust their course due dates after the University resumed classes. Adjustments needed to be made to missed assignments and subsequent assignment dates, allowing ample time for students to learn their course content before assessment. With the Due Date Changer tool, faculty turned what was once a time-consuming process for an urgent situation into a simple 5-minute task. UCF faculty members raved about the efficiency and ease of using the Due Date Changer:
“Guess that assignment due date tool will come in handy, lol” in regards to the University announcing that classes would be closed during the preparation, storm, and recovery period from Hurricane Irma.
“That ‘Change Due Dates’ feature has earned its keep this semester!” after using the tool to change when students were required to complete assignments.
“I was so grateful for the new date changer tool!  I love that!”
“I used the new Due Date Changer yesterday to update my three online classes and it worked great! This is the best upgrade in terms of time savings that I have experienced in my 15 years of online experience at UCF!”
What is the Due Date Changer?
The Webcourses@UCF Due Date Changer allows faculty members to quickly change all due dates in a course from a single page. The tool will display all items with a due date listed on a page for ease of changing the due dates and availability of course activities. For more information on how to use this important time saver, see Webcourses@UCF Due Date Changer. This LTI®-enabled application has been integrated into a UCF’s instance of the Canvas LMS. We are utilizing the LTI standard, as well as the Canvas APIs. This allows us greater access to the LMS feature set, but also means that Due Date Changer is currently only compatible with Instructure Canvas.
 
How to attain this tool?
UCF freely licenses this tool to all academic institutions. A license and access to the tool can be acquired through UCF’s Tech Transfer program (https://tt.research.ucf.edu/).
 
Thanks to Amanda E. Major, Instructional Designer, UCF Center for Distributed Learning for contributing this story.

 

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