Canvas Calendar

Canvas Calendar

The Calendar will show events, assignments with due dates, and to-do items, making it a useful resource for your students to track their courses and their course work.
Related Topics: Canvas

Calendar

The Calendar tool in Canvas is a global tool, meaning it is used across all of your Canvas course sites.  Click on the Calendar button on the Global Navigation Menu, the green vertical bar on left side of screen. The Calendar can be viewed by day, week, month, or as an agenda list.  There is also a Scheduler tool in the Calendar where you can Schedule office hours or appointments with your students.

The Calendar will show events, assignments with due dates, to-do items. These items can even be added to your course from the Calendar tool.  

Each personal calendar, course calendar, and group calendar is identified by a separate color that populates the calendar view. By default, the first 10 calendars in in the list on the right will be selected and appear in the calendar view.  To hide a calendar, click the box next to the name of the calendar.  By clicking on those boxes, one calendar can be viewed, or all calendars for the term can be viewed.

On the right panel, below the list of calendars, there is an Undated list.  Click on the dropdown arrow next to the word Undated to expand the list.  These are items in your course(s) that do not have a due date.  This is a good list to look at before publishing a course to make sure all course activities have a due date or a "to-do" date.

Calendar in Canvas showing month display

Adding an Event to the Calendar

To add items to the Calendar, click on the + sign on the button bar at the top of the screen. Items that can be added to the Calendar include Events, Assignments, My To Do's, and Appointment Groups.  

Menu bar to add to calendar

To add an event to  a calendar select the Event tab.  Make sure all required information is entered including:

  • Title for the event
  • The Date and Time of the event
  • Location of the event

Most importantly be sure the Calendar selected is the calendar where this event should be added. Then click on Submit.

Calendar window to add event to calendar

 

Adding an Assignment Using the Calendar Tool

While in most cases assignments are added to a Canvas course on the Assignments page, an assignment can be created on the Edit Event tab. 

Enter the key elements into the form, and confirm the calendar selected is correct.  Doing this, will create a placeholder assignment.  To create a complete assignment with all the details click on the More Options button. This will take you to the Assignment tool and all you to complete entering details for the assignment.  As always, remember to click the Submit button. 

Calendar window to add assignment

Adding an Item to My To Do List

The third tab on the Edit Event dialog box is where users enter information to add an event to their ToDo list for a specific Calendar.  These items will appear on the Calendar and are also listed on the Dashboard in the ToDo list on the right side of the Dashboard.

Calendar window to add an item

 

Appointment Group

The Appointment Group tab allows the creation of multiple time slots for individual student or multiple students to reserve a specific time  for appointments.  This option is covered in the Scheduling office hours or appointments with your students.