What is the Calendar?

One of the challenges facing both students and instructors is keeping track of all of the assignments planned throughout the term. Instructors are teaching multiple courses and students are learning in multiple courses. Every course has its own timeline for when things need to be done. The Calendar helps everyone stay on schedule and up to date.

The Calendar in Canvas is a global feature, meaning users can see all courses assignments and events in one place. Calendars can be filtered by selecting or deselecting courses in the sidebar.

To help manage user calendars, courses customized in the courses drop-down menu as a favorite course will always be listed at the top of the user’s calendar list in the calendar sidebar. By default, the Calendar displays a maximum of 10 course calendars. To increase the amount of course calendars that can display to users in your Canvas account, contact your Customer Success Manager.

Instructor View

The Calendar is used for reminding students of graded Assignments with specific due dates. To provide students with detailed descriptions of how synchronous class time will be used, consider using Pages or customizing the Course Home Page.

The Calendar automatically syncs with other features in Canvas, such as Assignments, Syllabus, and Grades, so if you create, change, or delete the due date of an Assignment on the Calendar, it will show up in all the others and vice versa. You can change dates easily by dragging and dropping assignments from one date to another.

When would I use the Calendar as an instructor?

As an instructor, use the Calendar to:

  • View and create activities in your course as well as events and personal reminders; you can also filter the calendar view to only see specific calendars.
  • Quickly add Assignments to a blank course. Fill in the details of those Assignments later.
  • Adjust the dates of Assignments that have been imported from previous terms. Canvas makes it easy to drag and drop events across multiple months.
  • Copy the iCal feed for all of your courses and import it to your preferred personal Calendar, such as Google or Outlook.
  • Set recurring calendar events.
  • Schedule appointments with students using the Scheduler (optional feature).
  • Subscribe to Account Calendars made by admins (optional feature).

Student View

Students can use the calendar to view their upcoming course events and assignments. They can also create personal events such as study groups.

When would I use the Calendar as a student?

When would I use the Calendar as a student?

  • View course calendars and group calendars.
  • Create personal calendar reminders.
  • Filter the calendar view to only see specific calendars.
  • Copy the iCal feed for all of your courses and import it to your preferred personal Calendar, such as Google or Outlook.
  • Set recurring calendar events.
  • Subscribe to Account Calendars made by admins (optional feature).