Creating and using Delivery Schedules

What is a delivery schedule?

A Delivery Schedule is a set of rules that defines at a course or unit level, what dates your activities and units are opened or closed for access by your students. This allows you to emulate "terms" or "blocks" within the Student Portal so students can't jump ahead of the content you wish to deliver. You can also configure due dates to give students early warning of when you expect their assessments to be submitted.

Setting up a delivery schedule

Units

Starting with your Units, make sure you've got Activities added to the unit and at least one Pathway configured, then head over to the Delivery Schedule tab.  From here, you can click the Add Delivery Schedule button at the bottom to begin creating a schedule.

You will be prompted to give your schedule a name, in this case we've gone with "Default" and you will be able to see the activities in each pathway listed, as below.

• Start (Relative) is how long after the origin/base date of the schedule (more on this below) the student must wait until the activity becomes available. So if you set this to 3 days for an activity, the student won't be able to access that activity until three days after their origin/base date.
• Due (Relative) is an optional field that can be used to give students a date by which they should have ideally completed the corresponding activity. Note that this field is never responsible for locking out student access, but there is an automated messaging trigger that can be used in conjunction with specified due dates (more on this below).
• End (Relative) is how long after the origin/base date of the schedule the activity remains available, with access being removed afterwards. So if you set this to 15 days for an activity, the student will not be able to access this after 15 days have elapsed after their origin/base date.
• Always Open should be ticked on if you want the activity to always be accessible to student, with no limiting start date or end date in any way.

It is important to note that start, due, and end dates are considered relative. Values you enter here get offset relative to the start date of the unit within a course.  Here, we've entered some start and end periods with due dates in the middle, then clicked the "Save changes" button to apply these.

For example, if a unit starts 10 days after the course start, and an activity starts 5 days after that unit begins, the activity will fall 15 days after the student enrols.

Once you have configured at least one delivery schedule for your unit, you'll then need to move to the Activities tab and select the "Activities will follow the delivery schedule" option, located underneath the list of activities.

Courses

Setting up a delivery schedule for a course is similar to setting up for a unit; the major difference being that you also need to select which of the unit's schedules you're referring to here.  This allows you to have multiple schedules at the unit level (this is useful if, for example, the unit is in many different courses or a "fast track" version);

The rest of the process is similar, entering a number of Days, Weeks or Months to offset the Start/End dates from the timetable or enrolment.

Once you have configured at least one delivery schedule for your course, you'll then need to move to the Units tab and select the "Units will follow the delivery schedule" option, located underneath the list of units in your course.

Previewing your Delivery Schedule

Clicking the Convert to Dates button at the bottom of the Delivery Schedule creation tool allows you to project the delivery schedule from a specified start date.  In this example, you can see that the units and activities with a Delivery Schedule applied have start and end dates calculated from the given start date.

Using a Delivery Schedule

When you've configured your course and unit(s) to have a Delivery Schedule set up, it's time to use it on a timetable. On the "Units and Pathways" page (the second page) of the Edit Timetable wizard, there will be a dropdown to apply a Delivery Schedule to the timetable. You can select any Delivery Schedule that has been configured for the course/unit that has been timetabled, or even choose to not use any Delivery Schedule at all.

As with the course and unit screens, the Preview Schedule button here shows the start and finish dates for all units and activities inside the timetable.

• For Scheduled timetables (i.e. any timetable with a configured Start Date), the Delivery Schedule will use that start date as the origin/base date for all students enrolment in the timetable. This means each student will have the exact same start/due/end dates across the entire timetable (not counting individually applied exceptions)
• For Always Open timetables, the Delivery Schedule will use each individual student's booking date as their own origin/base date. This means each student will likely have differing start/due/end dates (unless all students have been booked into the timetable on the exact same date).

When a Delivery Schedule has been applied to a student and they access their enrolment via their Student Portal, they will seem something similar to the following (depending on the configuration of the Delivery Schedule);

For this example, note the following;

1. The unit as a whole has a due date, and then an end date after that. The student will still have access to the unit after the due date, but they will lose access after the end date.
2. The first activity is accessible, but has an upcoming due date and end date. The student will still have access to the activity after the due date, but they will lose access after the end date.
3. The second activity has closed due to an elapsed end date, which means the student can no longer access it.
4. The third activity has not yet opened, because the start date has not yet been reached. That said, the student can see the scheduled due date and end date underneath the activity title, so that they can plan to complete the activity within their access window.

Entire units can also be locked until a given start date, which means they're inaccessible until that date...

... and they can also be configured to close down after a given end date as well. Both of these options prevent students from accessing the activities within the unit.

Manually Overriding a Delivery Schedule

Admin users can manually override the Delivery Schedule statuses of units and activities via the student's Progress Tracker. This overrules any date-based configuration that is applied to them.

For example, if a student's unit or activity has expired or not yet started but you'd like to allow them to access it anyway, you can click the corresponding Unlock button. Or, if you'd like to prevent a student from accessing a unit or activity entirely, you can click the corresponding Lock button.

The student will be advised of this manual override via their Student Portal. Note that activity-level overrides may also need to be activated in addition to unit-level overrides.

Utilising Time Extensions

If you'd like to make use of a more automated process for tracking and approving time extensions to activity end dates that have been configured via Delivery Schedules, you can use the "Request Time Extension" feature. To activate this, navigate to SETUP > System Defaults > Student Portal > Extra Time.

Once enabled, students can request an extension to their end dates by clicking the Request Time Extension button found near the top of their enrolment page;

This allows the student to request extensions for their activity end dates.

This can optionally be configured to charge students a fee based on the number of days they need the extension for; this price is configured under the Enrol tab of the course or unit the student is enrolled in, and will send in-system Payment Requests for the student to action. You can also allow students to self-serve their own extensions, without waiting for a staff member to approve the extension; for this option, tick on the "Allow self-serve time extensions" option.

If an extension request needs to be approved, an alert will be sent to the Admin Dashboard. Admins can either click this link or manually navigate to the student's Advanced Booking Editor and use the button under the Time Limits heading...

... to approve the extension (including the generation of a Payment Request, if necessary).

You can also optionally allow Assessors to approve requested time extensions. This is a system-level configuration option that can be set via SETUP > System Defaults > Student Portal Settings, under the "Extra Time" heading;

When ticked on, Assessors will then be able to approve submitted time extension requests via the Enrolment Dossier page of their Assessor Portal;

Automated Messaging Triggers

There are some specific automated messaging triggers associated with the use of Delivery Schedules - one for start date, due date, and end date. These are accessible via the Messages tab of the course / unit specification page;

This allows you to configure various automated notifications based on the relative dates of your configured Delivery Schedules. For example, you could configure an email to be sent out to students three days prior to their due date, to warn them of this upcoming milestone. Or, you could set up a notification to be sent one day after the start date, to remind them that they have new activities/units to complete.

For more details on configuring automated messages, we recommend reading this Knowledge Base article.