Using the Blackboard Learn Calendar Effectively

One tool I find is underused in Blackboard Learn is the course calendar.  One of the challenges students identified in Ann Saxton's Distance Education survey is time management, including knowing when everything is due and what is due on a given date. If you use the Calendar tool in your course, you can help them keep track.

Some things you should know about the Calendar:

1. Tests and Assignments that have Due Dates in Learn automatically appear in the Calendar. That includes some assignments that automaticaully syncfrom publisher sites, like McGraw-Hill Connect (if they create a column in your Grade Center).
2. Any Grade Center column you add that has a due date also appears in the Calendar.  If you add a column for a grade from an external site that you enter manually, for example, that item will appear in the Calendar, based on the due date you set up.
3. If you have an Display After date set, the item won't appear in the Calendar until after the availability starts.
4. If you don't have a Display After date set, but the item is in a Learning Module or Content Area with a Display after date, the item will appear on the Calendar, but the students will not be able to access it until the module or area becomes available.
5. Graded Tools (like blogs, journals, or discussions) that have availability dates for individual items (a weekly blog, a specific journal, or a discussion forum) will not appear in the Calendar until that Display After date occurs.
6. You can add items or a series of items to the Calendar manually.

How do I use all of this information to organize my calendar?

1. I like to have course material become available on a weekly basis, so I organize everything into Learning Modules.  The Display After date on the module controls the availability of items in the module.  Students can see them on the Calendar, but they cannot access them until the module becomes available.
2. I have a weekly blog that student do, but the individual blog entries do not appear on the Calendar until the week they become available.  So students can plan ahead, I add a manual Calendar entry for those blogs, just as a reminder that they have to do that each week.
3. One of the external web sites I use does not sync individual grades with Learn, so for each external assignement, I add a manual entry column in the Learn Grade Center with a due date associated with it.  

Let's take a look at how this works - here are some short videos demonstrating these points. First, this is what the calendar looks like as a student.

This video shows you how to control the availability of items by using the Display After date on a Learning Module (or Content Area) instead of on the item itself.

Finally, if you use tools like Blogs, Journals, or Discussions, and you have due dates for individual entries, you need to use a manual calendar entry to enter those due dates into the Calendar.  Otherwise, they won't appear until the individual item becomes available to the student.

Here is Blackboard's video giving an overview of how the Calendar works: