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How Do I Change an Exercise Environment's Availability Dates?

Abstract

This article covers how to change an exercise environment's availability dates and how to make environments active or inactive. If a course is extended or your needs evolve, you can easily adjust the start and end dates of your exercise environments. If you would like information on how to create exercise environments for your courses, please visit our Creating Exercise Environments article.

  1. Once logged in to the Virginia Cyber Range, navigate to your course page.

    The course page is displayed with the course's exercise environments listed below the course details.

  2. Select the exercise environment in which you would like to adjust the availability dates.

    Environments are located below the "Exercise Groups" section.

  3. Click the Edit Environment button.

    The environment page is displayed. The Edit this exercise button is located on the right-hand side above the Delete Environment button.

  4. Adjust the availability dates to your desired start and/or end date.

    Important

    Exercise environments can be extended as long as they are under an active course. The exercise environment end date cannot be extended beyond the course expiration date. If you would like to learn more about changing your course's end date, please visit our How Do You Change A Course Expiration Date? article.

    1. Select the Start Date or End Date field.

      The Edit an Exercise Environment pop-up is displayed. The availability with the start date and end date is under the Availability section.

    2. Select your desired dates.

      After selecting the start date or end date field, a calendar will appear which allows you to pick dates.

  5. Click Confirm to apply your changes.

    The confirm button is located in the bottom right of the window and to the right of the cancel button.

Active and Inactive Environments

This is a feature that allows instructors to set up and configure multiple environments in advance, while also allowing them to choose which environments students can work in at a given time.

An active environment is an exercise environment that is available for students to access with a defined start and end date set by an instructor.

An active exercise environment is denoted with a green eye icon and says "Available to Students".

An inactive environment is an exercise environment that is unavailable for students to access, with start and end dates that can be undefined, in the past, or set for the future. Instructors and TAs are still able to access inactive environments.

An inactive exercise environment is denoted with a red eye icon and says "Unavailable to Students".

How Do I Make an Exercise Environment Inactive?

Note

To provide the best learning experience, we offer two active exercise environments and three inactive exercise environments per course. However, if you require more exercise environments, you can either delete an existing exercise environment or request an additional course.

When creating an exercise environment, or editing an existing environment in your course, there will be a checkbox in the “Availability” section of the environment’s page that says “Schedule environment availability for students". When checked, instructors can set the start and end dates for when they would like the environment to be active for students. The checkbox is the first item under the Availability section, when it is checked, it is followed by the Start Date and End Date pickers.

When unchecked, there will be no date picker, and the environment will be inactive with a start and end date of “Not Set”. The checkbox is the first item under the Availability section, when it is unchecked, the Start Date and End Date pickers are removed.

Note

If the start date is set in the future, the environment will be an inactive environment and then become active at the start date (provided the number of already active environments does not exceed the course limit.) If the end date is in the past, the environment will also become an inactive environment.

Students will still be able to see inactive environments in a course, but they will be now indicated with a dashed border and labeled “Unavailable to Students”. Environments are located below the "Exercise Groups" section. View from a student's perspective

Have a Question? Contact Support

Important

Students, please reach out to your instructor who can submit a ticket to our Support Team on your behalf.

We're here to help you. If you still have questions after reviewing the information above, please feel free to submit a ticket with our Support Team and we'll get back to you as soon as possible.