Moodle Tips – How to display course activities dates based on course start date of student

Course Relative Dates is an experimental feature which was introduced in Moodle 3.8. The course relative dates features enables course or activity dates to be displayed relative to the user’s start date in the course. This feature can be very helpful in asynchronous courses where you have users enrolling in the course throughout the year.

Let’s say that User 1 is enrolled in your course on 4th July, so he will see the 1st week content after his enrollment. Similarly User 2 is enrolled in your course on 11 July, so he will see the 1st week course content after his enrollment but the User 1 will be able to see the 2nd Week content by now.

The users course start date is their enrolment start date. The experimental feature is available only for the following areas since Moodle 3.8:

• Weekly Course Format
• Assignments

However, the feature is planned to be added to other course areas like Quiz, Lesson or other Restrict Activity areas.

Kindly note that in order to use the course relative dates feature, you need to enable this on before the start of the course. Relative dates mode cannot be changed once the course has been created. Relative dates mode cannot be enabled for existing courses. 

How to use the Course Relative Dates feature

Before you can use this feature, the site administrator need to enable this feature. To enable this feature, please check the Site administration > Development > Experimental settings > Course Relative Dates.

Now as a teacher, when you add a new course, you will see a new setting under the General Section of Course Settings page.

Course Relative Dates feature in Moodle

However, it seems that the Moodle HQ need some more time to make it as a stable feature in Moodle core. With all the focus towards improving the UX of Moodle, it may be coming in future Moodle version in core. In case you are interested in using this feature, you can vote for the Tracker MDL-66044 to get it developed for all activities.

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