About Class Meeting Times

When you create a new course section, specifying when the class meets lets you schedule assignments based on those meeting days and times — for example, to make homework due at the start of Friday's class. For many users, this is a helpful option. Other users might benefit from not specifying class meeting times.

Available Scheduling Options

If you specify class meet times, you have two options when you schedule assignments:

Schedule relative to when the class meets, for example, to make an in-class assignment due 10 minutes before the end of Wednesday's class.
Schedule on a specific day of the week, for example, to make an assignment due at 10:30pm on Monday.

If you do not specify class meet times, you can only schedule assignments for a specific day of the week.

Tip After creating a section, you can add or remove meet times if you have not yet scheduled any assignments for the section.

Benefits of Specifying Meeting Times

Specifying meeting times — and scheduling assignments based on those meeting times — can be very helpful for instructors who teach multiple sections of the same class or who teach the same class and want to use the same assignments for more than one term. Specifying meeting times is also recommended for course coordinators.

You do not have to remember when each section meets or calculate the due date yourself.
Assignments scheduled in this way are intelligently rescheduled when copied to other sections or courses, based on the meet times of the sections to which they are copied.
For example, if the assignment was scheduled for a section that meets at 8:30 AM on MWF in the fall term to be due 10 minutes before Wednesday's class starts in week 4, it will be scheduled for a section that meets at 10:00 AM on TuTh in the spring term to be due 10 minutes before Thursday's class starts in week 4. The original scheduling rule is used, but is applied to the new class schedule for the new section.

Instructors Who Might Not Want to Specify Meeting Times

Some instructors might find it simpler and faster to schedule assignments if they do not specify meet times for a class. This is often true if:

You are teaching an online class with no class meetings.
You are teaching a class that does not meet regularly at the same days and times each week.
You are teaching a single section of a course that you do not plan to teach again.
You don't ever want to schedule assignments based on class meetings.

Other Behavior Changes Associated with Meeting Times

Whether or not your original section specifies class meeting times affects how you add or copy the section and whether you can copy scheduled assignments between sections.

Action	Meeting Times Specified	No Meeting Times Specified
Add a section to the course	New sections must specify meeting times.	New sections can't specify meeting times.
Copy scheduled assignments to other sections	You can't copy assignments to sections that do not specify meet times.	You can't copy assignments to sections that do specify meet times.
Copy a section to a new course	The new section must specify meeting times.	You can choose whether or not the new section specifies meeting times.
Copy a section to an existing course	The new section must specify meeting times.	You can choose whether or not the new section specifies meeting times.

Best Practice All sections of a multisection course should either specify meeting times or not.