For reasons that I cannot comprehend, our users frequently join ILC sessions early or late because they do not account for the time zone change. I know that the calendar invite resolves this by switching to their correct time zone, and I know that the time zone of the course is displayed prominently on the enrollment page, but we continue to have issues.
If the learner's time zone was stored in their profile (force a selection the first time they choose an ILC) then you could easily translate so that the learner would see their time zone displayed for each ILC session.
As a company with a global workforce, I can't say enough how much we need this feature! Right now, our options are to select a time zone that we think covers the majority of the intended participants (which has led to confusion for many) or to use UTC which everyone must convert to their local time zone. We have had many instances where a learner realizes the day before a session that they signed up for something that is not within their working hours (for example - China Standard Time is misinterpreted as Central Standard Time). Please consider this!
Demetrio, thank you for the work around, but the times displayed are even more confusing now!
As directed, we selected UTC time zone when configuring the ILC sessions as an admin. It does make the numerical time change for the learner but still lists the time zone as UTC (GMT).
See attached for the 2:00pm-3:00pm UTC sessions displayed in my time (as a learner) as 9:00 AM EDT and GMT!
Hi Demetrio - Our team at Mitacs tried your UTC time suggestion. This helps if the student is viewing the course on Edge, but it does not fix the problem within the session reminder emails. Our team managed to track down our student's confusion to the unclear time indication on our session reminder emails (which don't show the time zone). I thought I would mention this in case it helps Christopher figure why students might be continuously showing up at the wrong time. I have posted on the Ideas Portal already with a request to add a time zone option for the reminder emails.
Thank you for your idea. That is correct as you indicated, our calendar invites once received into the learner's calendar ultimately get resolved into their learner's time zone and the timezone (e.g. EDT) is prominently displayed in the ILC course details for the session; however, I can see that this might cause confusion for your learners to have to calculate it to their local time.
Are you aware of the timezone selection for admins & instructors "(UTC) Coordinated Universal Time" when configuring your ILC sessions as an admin or an instructor (attached image)?
If this is chosen, it will automatically calculate to the learner's timezone in their browser (second attached image).
This would require the admin or instructor to calculate their session start time to UTC when configuring the session, but it is an interim workaround until we implement the conversion on the learner side for any timezone selection on the admin side.