Regarding the Course Calendar Feature

Question

Hello Community,

We are fairly new users to Brightspace. A couple instructors who are early adopters have some questions regarding the functionality of the Calendar tool. Rather that trying to rearticulate their comments, I'm going to provide the words below. I would appreciate any guidance that you can provide with this.

Instructor 1:

We have the ability to add calendars to our course calendar, but only if they already exist. Is there a way to construct our own calendar and add it to the course calendar? Or is there a way to use Course Schedule without assigning availability restrictions for every module?

Instructor 2:

The biggest thing is being able to customize, including creating our own calendars to add to the course calendar, as well as custom categories to filter the calendar events. As an example to help clarify, I would be envisioning an application where course content (modules) is one calendar and course assignments would be another. Filtering can accomplish that (with more clicks), but I think having the ability to create our own calendars would give instructors more flexibility to fully utilize the calendar/scheduling tools.

Can you please advise?

Thank you,

Richard Wack

UNIT Instructional Technologies

Villanova University

Krizzy.S.9720 · Answer

Hi Richard,

Apologies for the confusion in my earlier explanation! What I meant is that you can assign Assignment Categories in Brightspace, which are then reflected in the Calendar. Using the Calendar tool, you can filter events by existing types such as Assignments, Quizzes, Discussions, and others.  The filtering options are based on the event types already built into Brightspace.

I hope this clears things up!

Richard.W.228 · Answer

Hi @Krizzy.S.9720,

Thanks for your response. You mentioned in point 1 that when creating an event, you can assign it to a specific category. When I tested creating a calendar event, I see that you can add content, however I didn't see an option to assign it to a category. Can you tell me how that's accomplished?

Thanks,

Rich

Krizzy.S.9720 · Answer

Hello @Richard.W.228, thank you for these questions. Will try to break it down:

* Instructors can add events to the course calendar but cannot create entirely separate custom calendars within a course. However you can categorize events to organize them effectively. When creating an event, you can assign it to a specific category.

https://community.d2l.com/brightspace/kb/articles/18115-calendar

* The Course Schedule in Brightspace is designed to display events and due dates. While availability dates for modules and topics automatically appear in the calendar, you can manually add events without setting availability restrictions. This enables you to include important dates or reminders that aren't tied to specific content availability.

We have this article that could guide you on managing course events and utilizing the Calendar tool.

https://community.d2l.com/brightspace/kb/articles/18127-manage-course-events-with-the-calendar-tool

.

Krizzy