Canvas and Moodle deadlines in Google Calendar

What a calendar link is

A calendar link (an iCal, ics or webcal link) is an address your calendar fetches now and then. It holds your assignments with their due dates, and on some platforms your course events too. A new assignment or a moved deadline comes along with the next refresh, without you doing anything.

The link is personal: whoever has it sees your assignments. Do not post it in a group chat, and if it leaks, most platforms let you reset it.

Finding the link on your platform

Canvas

• Open Calendar in the menu on the left.
• At the bottom right, click Calendar Feed.
• Copy the address it shows.

Moodle

• Open the calendar: Dashboard, then Calendar.
• Click Import or export calendars, then Export calendar.
• Choose All courses and a period (choose the longest), then Get calendar URL, and copy the address.

Brightspace (D2L)

• Open Calendar, from a course or the homepage.
• Click Subscribe, next to the calendar's name.
• Choose All courses and copy the address.

Blackboard

• Open Calendar in the menu.
• In its settings (the gear), choose Share calendar or Get external calendar link, depending on your version.
• Copy the link.

If your school's platform goes by its own name, one of these four is often behind it; look in its calendar for export, subscribe or share. Any link that starts with https:// or webcal:// works the same way.

Adding it to Google Calendar

• Open Google Calendar on a computer (the phone app cannot add a link).
• Next to Other calendars, click the plus and choose From URL.
• Paste the link and click Add calendar. Give it a colour you will recognise.

Your deadlines now appear as events on their due dates, on every device where you use Google Calendar.

Two limits. Google refreshes such a calendar at its own pace, often only a few times a day, so a deadline that just moved may sit in its old place for a while. And there a deadline is only a moment: Google plans no time to work on the assignment, so the week before still looks empty.

From a deadline to time to work on it

A deadline in your calendar tells you when it is too late. What you need is the work in the days before: an estimate in hours, cut into sessions in your free time, finished a day early. For a 4.5-hour essay due Thursday with classes most mornings, that might be:

The weekly study schedule guide covers how to spread several assignments like this without stacking them on one day.

How Orondia does this for you

In Orondia you paste the link under Settings → Calendars → Add calendar. Orondia recognises Canvas, Moodle, Brightspace and Blackboard from the address, shows the steps for that platform, and turns the link into a task list rather than loose events:

• Every assignment becomes a task with its deadline. It starts with an hour and a half of work, which you change per task.
• The planner cuts that work into sessions in your free time, around your classes, until the day before the deadline, as in the figure above.
• The link is refreshed every hour. A new assignment or a moved deadline comes in by itself.
• From Canvas, ordinary course events such as lectures stay out of your task list; the assignments come in.
• If an assignment leaves the platform, it is marked, not deleted: the work you logged on it is yours.

Your timetable's calendar link goes in the same way as an ordinary calendar, so your classes become fixed blocks. Free keeps one calendar link refreshed; Pro or the student price gives you as many as you like. Make a free account and paste your link in the welcome.