Successfully managing your class assignments can get even trickier when students join midway through an academic term or year. In this guide, we show you how Cloud Design Box can make your life easier with Microsoft Teams assignments.
This blog answers a question we recently received during one of our teacher training sessions:
“If I create a Teams assignment with a hard close date but also set it to go to future students, what happens when a new student joins the class after that close date?”
Students join classes midway through a term or academic year for a number of reasons, whether it’s due to transfer from another school, switching subjects or moving up or down sets/grades.
But, in many cases, students still need to complete assignments, even if the work was originally set before they joined the class.
Below, we walk you through exactly what happens in this scenario and what you can do to fix it.
What happens when students join a Microsoft Teams Class after assignment deadlines have been set?
Let’s say you have set up an assignment in Microsoft Teams in the usual way:
- You’ve included the title, instructions, resources and points.
- You’ve set both a due date and a close date (so no late submissions)
- You’ve assigned it to “all current and future students”
Everything looks good, your assignment goes out, and your current students get the notification.
But, what happens when a new student joins your class after the close date?
- The new student does get a notification about the assignment
- But, when they go to view it, they won’t be able to access it
- And the new assignment will not show up in Forthcoming, Past Due or Completed assignment tabs
So, even though you intended for new students to receive the assignment, Teams blocks it once the hard close date has passed.
How to handle past assignments in Teams for new students joining mid-year?
If you need your new students to complete a closed assignment, here’s what to do instead.:
- Go to the assignment in your Assignments tab.
- Tap Edit.
- Open the Edit Assignment Timeline section.
- Turn off the close date.
- Hit Done and then Update.
The new student will now get access to this assignment in their Assignments list.
Warning: The assignment will be marked as “Past Due”, but is still accessible and gradable like any other work. You can always adjust the due date to give the student more time.
Things to remember:
- If the assignment has a hard close date, new students joining the class after this date will get a notification about this, but won’t get access to it, even if “future students” was selected.
- You can fix this by disabling the close date and updating the assignment.
Cloud Design Box helps schools and trusts drive success and improve learning with a feature-rich platform dedicated to achieving more with Microsoft 365, SharePoint and Teams. Get support from one of our Microsoft Education experts today.
