How to force exact dates instead of relative dates

Is there a way to make Canvas show actual dates (January 25) instead of relative dates (last week)?

The use of relative dates is causing confusion for some of our users. It's of particular concern when it comes to discussion posts and responses. Instructors need to know the actual date and time a post was made to determine if it was late but the use of relative dates makes this difficult. While the relative dates do change to actual dates, that change doesn't happen within the timeline of when instructors need to grade student responses.

Has anyone found a solution for this? I didn't see any kind of option for this when looking at my personal user settings.

Thank you.

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Accepted answers

Nicki Schermann

I've confirmed that a fix has been pushed out for this - I've checked and the notes refer both to the discussions in speedgrader and the access reports mentioned above; so that should be resolved for you all now. If you're still experiencing the issue, please circle back to Support.

All comments

Nicki Schermann

Hi there! If the issue you're experienced specifically relates to those relative dates being on discussion posts when they are viewed in the Speedgrader, the good news is that this is something already being explored by our engineering team. I believe current expected behaviour is that it shows a relative date initially, then changes to a fixed date after a certain period of time. I can't guarantee what next steps are going to be in terms of either getting this resolved or finding a workaround, but I would recommend submitting a support ticket as a next step, and perhaps connecting with your CSM to track the work the engineering team is doing in this area.

stewartk1

I'm actually interested in enforcing actual time stamps for all dates, not just in Discussions. The "current expected behaviour is that it shows a relative date initially, then changes to a fixed date after a certain period of time" is not helpful to our users, especially our instructors when grading. The "certain period of time" is often longer than the expected turnaround time for instructors to grade and give feedback to students.

dbrace

This also started happening for Access Reports.

https://community.instructure.com/en/kb/articles/660982-how-do-i-view-the-course-access-report-for-an-individual-user

Over the phone, I reported it to Canvas Support (case 13552432) on Friday, January 30th. Tier 1 was not able to help and they got back to me over email. Their response said: I spoke to our next level of support who are having me send it up as a UX bug to see if this is something that could be updated.

It is my understanding that this change (at least for Access Reports) was related to another change and they were not sure if it could be reverted.

-Doug

clpatter

According to a response in this post, Canvas is planning on fixing the issue.

Discussion post date has changed in speed grader - Instructure Community

Nicki Schermann

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