Start and due dates control when a pathway opens to students and when it stops accepting work. Mindjoy fills them in for you: students can start straight away, and the pathway is due the coming Friday at midnight (or the Friday after, if you assign on a Thursday or Friday).
Setting the dates
Open My Library from the sidebar and click your pathway. Set the type filter to Pathways if you have a lot of content.
Click Assign, tick the classrooms and click Next. The Choose settings step shows when students can start and when the pathway is due.
Ticked more than one classroom? Untick Same settings for all classrooms and each classroom gets its own card, so the same pathway can run on different dates for different classes.
Click the pencil next to a date to pick a day from the calendar and set a time. To take the due date off, open the due line and untick Due date.
Click Next, check the summary, then click Assign.
What the dates do
Start. Before this, students cannot open the pathway.
Due. After this, the pathway stops accepting submissions. Students who have not finished get reminders in their Inbox as it gets close.
You can change either date later. See Extend a Pathway's due date.