2fThe ladder, rebalanced 1k — the school calendar drops to a bonus rung, course norms take the top, and the ask is the same sentence at every level.
What the slot says, by what we hold
Top rung wins
01
A date someone gave us
Syllabus, or one student's ten seconds
Real countdown, amber, course-wide
Best case
02
How this course usually runs
Past and sibling sections
Season range, or a labelled estimate
Most L3 courses
03
The school's calendar
First class · add/drop · finals window
Term milestone, blue
A few schools
04
Only the material
Units, questions, past-section rhythm
This week's unit, and progress through it
Every course
The ask never changes: Add the date One field. Whoever answers, answers for all 163 students.
Rung 02 and rung 03 swapped places on your answer, and it improves the story: the course's own history is a better source than the registrar, and it scales with the L3 catalogue instead of with calendar integrations.