[LON-CAPA-users] Online Exams and Timezones

[Stuart Raeburn]

Doug,

> ... So for example, we have a slot from 4:30 to 7:30  for an online  
> exam, Central Daylight Savings Time.  Will a student  in the Eastern  
> Timezone see that listed at 5:30-8:30 OR do they  simply need to  
> take into account that the timezone the server is in  and make their  
> own adjustment?

For items in the Course Contents screen which use slot access, and for  
which the student already has a reservation (either an  
instructor-assigned slot or a student-selectable slot), the status  
column will show something like "Reserved - next open in x hours",  
between the open date and the slot start time, and "Reserved - ends in  
x minutes", between the slot start time and the slot end time.

The "Reservations" screen for the student will show the slot  
description for each resource for which a slot is assigned.

If the description field is empty, then LON-CAPA will show the slot  
name, followed by: "From $start to $end", where $start and $end will  
be the start and end times of the particular slot.

The timezone used when displaying the date/time for $start and $end is  
from lonlocal::gettimezone().  The routine looks for a timezone  
according to the following order (in course context):

(a) Timezone for course (from course settings)
(b) Timezone for course's domain (from domain configuration) if (a) not set.
(c) Timezone of server hosting user session if neither (a) nor (b) set.

You could also explicitly include the start and end times of the slot  
in the slot description, and you could choose which time zone to use  
when creating the description.

If you wanted students in different time zones to see slot start and  
end times in the time zone appropriate for their current location then  
one way you could do that currently would be to use multiple  
student-selectable slots, one for each time zone you want to support,  
and explicitly include the time zone in the slot description.  The  
idea would be that students then sign up by choosing the slot  
appropriate for their time zone.

Internally LON-CAPA stores all dates/times as UNIX timestamps (i.e.,  
seconds since UNIX epoch), so the different slots would all actually  
have the identical start times internally, it's just the description  
(which you would set) which would be different.


Stuart Raeburn
LON-CAPA Academic Consortium


Quoting "Mills, Douglas G" <dmills at illinois.edu>:

> HI All,
>
> Can anyone clarify for me if Lon-Capa takes into account the   
> timezone of an online student for things like signing up for a slot   
> to take an exam?  So for example, we have a slot from 4:30 to 7:30   
> for an online exam, Central Daylight Savings Time.  Will a student   
> in the Eastern Timezone see that listed at 5:30-8:30 OR do they   
> simply need to take into account that the timezone the server is in   
> and make their own adjustment?  Thanks!
>
> Doug
>
> Douglas Mills
> Director of Instructional Technology
> Department of Chemistry
> University of Illinois