This article provides an overview of features for managing course-level dates in Course Evaluations & Surveys (CES). Projects with varying course start and end dates throughout the academic year can utilize course-level date settings to align survey windows and reporting access with specific course schedules.
Note: Course dates appear in the search tool as a filter option to help locate courses, but they are not automatically imported with the courses themselves. By default, we only import Course Code, Course Title, and Course Unique ID. Since dates in CES define when a survey is active, importing course dates directly would cause the survey to remain open for the entire duration of the course, which is typically not ideal. To set dates in CES based on your Canvas course dates, follow the directions below.
Course-Level Dates Within LMS
CES Administrators and Node Administrators can import course-level dates during the course import process. Below is an example of the LMS data import feature within the Courses tab of a CES project. Interface layouts may vary based on the specific LMS integration. Projects not using an LMS integration can set dates using a course upload file instead.
Course-Level Dates in Upload File
When not importing courses from an LMS, or when LMS data excludes course dates, administrators can use the course upload feature to import course details via an Excel spreadsheet. This process also enables batch updates for course-level dates after transferring courses into CES.
- In the Courses tab of the project, select Data Import Excel to upload a course file containing course-level dates.
- In the Excel upload file, enter the course title, course code, and course unique identifier.
- Add specific survey start and end dates for the courses.
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Optionally, enter administrator-level reporting access start and end dates, as well as administrator access dates for course-level reporting.
- Add instructor course-level reporting access start and end dates.
Leaving these fields blank in the course upload file defaults survey and access dates to the project-level settings. Adding course-level dates to a course overrides project-level date settings.
Manually Editing Course-Level Dates
- Navigate to the Courses tab.
- Select Edit next to a specific course to view settings under Course Level Dates.
- Edit course-level dates manually on an individual course basis.
Batch Editing Course-Level Dates
After populating courses in a project, administrators can export selected courses or all courses, update dates in the Excel file, and re-upload the file to apply updates:
- Navigate to the Courses tab and select Export Selected Courses or Export All Courses in Project.
- In the exported Excel spreadsheet, update or add the course-level dates.
- Save the modified file.
- Return to the Courses tab.
- Select Excel from the Data Import menu.
- Upload the updated course file to the project.
Administrators can edit course-level dates manually or perform batch updates at any point, regardless of whether the initial course data came from an LMS import or an Excel upload.
Warning: When adding new courses to an active project using course-level dates, ensure the new courses contain accurate course-level dates via the LMS import or Excel upload file. Uploading courses without course-level dates to an active project causes start and end dates to revert to project-level settings. If the project start date is in the past, surveys launch immediately and scheduled project emails trigger instantly.
Course-Level Dates Communications
When setting up project communications that use course-level dates, select Number of Days Before/After Course-Level Start Date for All Emails as the scheduling option.