[ARCHIVED] Timezone of students

[masoodk]

Hello,

Many of my students live outside my country and they have different time zones. I was wondering whether it is possible for me to check the student's timezone from canvas? From where they are accessing the class lectures should be helpful for my purpose.

Thank you.

[James · Accepted solution]

@masoodk 

You won't be able to do this as an instructor. A Canvas administrator could go into each student's account and see what their timezone settings are.

That's a lot of work for your admin and you didn't provide a rationale for why you want this information. Other than curiosity, why does it matter what the local time is when the student is viewing things?  Assignments are not due based on the location where the student is. All due dates are based on the timezone for the course. If the course is using Eastern Standard Time (UTC-5) and you make an assignment due at at 11:59 pm, then it is stored within Canvas as 4:59 am the next day, which is what it would be in UTC time. Then when a student views the assignment, they see it in their own local timezone. A student who is in Mountain Standard Time (UTC-7), would see it due at 9:59 pm.

One thing you can do to see when students are accessing the data, but it won't give you the timezone, is to go into the Access Report for the student and see when the last time they viewed something was. This will be in your local timezone (which may or may not be the same as the course timezone).

[masoodk]

Hi,

The only reason I wanted to know the student timezone is that I wanted to make timezone specific exams. If I start an exam at 4 pm in my time zone, some student might have to take that exam at 3 am at their local timezone. So I wanted to group the students according to their timezone and then make a couple of exam sets, each set should be for each timezone. These exams should open at 4 pm at each time zone. That was my idea.

Thank you.

[James]

We have trouble imagining things outside of our experiences. I don't require my students to take an exam at a particular time and I leave it open for a while so that there is plenty of time for them to work around the timezone difference, so I didn't think of that usage.

My next question is why do you want to enforce a 4 pm time for this? That seems arbitrary if nothing else in the course has that requirement. I don't know what age your students are, but if a student works during the day, they may not be available at 4 pm. They may have another class that has scheduled meeting times during that time frame. For example, we have what we're calling "Online Live" courses that are online but have scheduled meeting times where the students are expected to be there for a Zoom session. Let's say that 4pm for a student in another timezone happens to match up with when another teacher is holding a class where attendance is expected. Your forcing them to take the exam at 4pm causes a conflict.

[Bobby2]

Hi @masoodk as far as I know this is not possible.

Perhaps it could be a discussion topic where your students can add their timezone there? 

[James]

Good way to get the information, Bobby.

If you're going to force them to take it at specific times, I would change it up though and ask "When would you like to take your exam?" and then give them some multiple choice options that list the time in the course time, UTC, and some key other timezones as well.