When setting your delivery dates for an assigment in CourseWork, it is often tempting to fill in all three of the boxes available: the available date, the due date, and the retract date. However, often it is the case that the only one we really need is the due date.
Available date:
Of course, ideally, we are very organized and set up our whole quarter two weeks before it starts: all materials ready for students and all assignments loaded with the appropriate dates. But there are times when we are running a bit behind and we don’t get around to setting up an assignment until the day we want to release it. In this case, you really don’t need a release date, since the assignment will be available as soon as it is published.
Retract date
The question to ask yourself is, “Does it really matter if students see this later in the quarter?” Unless the assignment has very high security content, then most of the time it does not matter. If this is the case, not setting a Retract date will allow you much more flexibility with students who run into difficulty submitting. If you do retract the assignment, there really is no way to get it back, which means that students who had difficulty submitting will not get another chance. The only way to re-release a retracted assignment is to rename it and release it to all students as a new assignment
Retakes
Did one of your students have trouble submitting an assignment? If so, you may be able to allow them to do a retake. Open the Scores link for the assignment and you will see the Overview of the assignment. If you click on Submission Status, you will see the name of each student who submitted and below that there should be an Email link and a link that says "Allow retake?" Click on this link. Note that this only works if the student actually submitted something. If they haven’t, then have them submit a blank assignment and then allow the retake. This will not work if you have retracted the assignment (yet another reason not to retract until the quarter ends).