Educators know that accommodations sometimes have to be made for individual students. Per-student due date overrides give a specific student their own schedule on a specific assignment — a later due date for an extension, an earlier available-from date for early access, or individual late acceptance — without changing anything for the rest of the class.
What an Override Contains
An override applies to one student on one assignment, and any of its fields can be set or left blank:
- Available from — when the assignment opens for this student
- Due date — this student’s own deadline
- Accept late submissions — allow this student to submit late even if the assignment or group schedule wouldn’t
- Note (visible to instructors only) — a free-text explanation of why the override was granted. Students never see the note.
Fields you leave blank fall through to the next level of the schedule (see Precedence below), so an override can change just the due date while leaving everything else untouched.
Creating an Override
Overrides can be managed from two places:
From the Assignment Editor
- Open the assignment and select the Scheduling tab.
- In the student overrides panel, click Add override.
- Choose a student. The picker only shows students you’re permitted to see under the standard visibility rules.
- Set the fields you want to override and add an optional note.
- Save the override.
From the Group Assignments Page
Overrides can also be managed from the group’s Assignments page. This is the path co-teachers use, since the assignment editor is only available to the assignment’s author and administrators.
Precedence: Which Dates Apply
When a student opens an assignment, their dates resolve field by field in this order:
- Student override — any field set on the student’s override wins
- Group schedule — for fields the override doesn’t set, the group distribution’s dates apply
- Assignment default — for anything still unset, the assignment’s own dates apply
Resolution happens per field. A student with only a due-date override still gets their group’s available-from date; a student with a full override ignores the group schedule entirely.
Late Penalties Follow the Override
Lateness is always measured against the student’s effective due date. When a student has an override, the free plugin’s late policy — the penalty percentage and the submission cutoff — computes against the override date, not the original deadline. A student with a one-week extension isn’t penalized until their extended date passes. See Due Dates and Late Policies for how the policies work.
What Students See
Students just see their dates. The assignment page shows the resolved available-from date, due date, and late policy for that student, with no indication that the dates are an override and no visibility into the instructor note.
What Instructors See
Submissions from a student with an override show an indicator in the submissions list. Open it to see the student’s resolved dates and the instructor-only note, so a grader reviewing late work can immediately see that an extension was granted and why.
Overrides and Group Changes
Overrides reference the student directly, not their group. They survive group membership changes and work identically whether your site uses PressPrimer groups or LearnDash Groups Mode. Overrides are removed automatically when the assignment they belong to is deleted.
Permissions
Override management follows the same rules as editing an assignment’s group distributions. Administrators can manage overrides on any assignment; teachers can manage overrides for students they’re permitted to see. There is no new capability to configure.
Limitations
- Overrides adjust dates, not policies. The penalty percentage and cutoff length come from the assignment’s late policy and are the same for everyone — the override moves the date the clock starts from.
- One student at a time. There is no bulk override application in this release.
- No student-facing labels or extension request workflow; overrides are created by instructors.