In Moodle the provisioned course start date and course end date come though automatically as a course is scheduled and will automatically open and close on those set date and times (to the next hour). If you don’t like those times, you can manually change the visibility of your course or you can preemptively modify those values to better meet your needs.
Enter the Moodle course.
Locate the Actions menu (gear icon) from the top-right corner of the page.
Select the Edit settings option.
Confirm the Course Start Date value.
If the date has not already passed and the course is not yet visible to students, then change the Course Start Date to when you would like your Moodle course to become available to students.
NOTE: The DEFAULT is around 1AM, Monday morning of the week the course is scheduled to begin.
If not already unchecked, uncheck the Calculate the end date from the number of sections box.
NOTE: This is especially important if you use Topics or do not use exactly 11 weeks of content in your Moodle course.
Confirm the Course End Date value.
If the date has not already passed and the course is not yet hidden to students, then change the Course End Date to when you would like your Moodle course to be hidden from students.
NOTE: The DEFAULT is after grades are due which is around midday on the Monday after finals week has passed.
Scroll to the bottom of the page.
Click the Save and display button.
Congratulations, this course will now open and/or close automatically based on the values you’ve set!