Using Brightspace Calendar & Dates

Students LOVE the Brightspace calendar! What’s not to like? Instead of going searching through content, all due dates pop up in one place.

Let’s help them out. We’ll learn all about adding content dates on Brightspace so your students can be more organized and ready for your course.

• Brightspace date terminology
• Add dates when you create content
• Add or edit dates from your Content page – Module dates – Topic Dates – Edit Dates
• Add dates to Checklist items
• Add dates to Announcements
• Create an event
• Manage all date with the Manage Dates tool – Offset course dates
• Add your Brightspace Calendar to Google Calendar + default email notifications

Brightspace date terminology

First, let’s talk about what different date terms mean in Brightspace.

📅 Start Date: Opens access to content and assignment submission. Before the start date, students will only be able to see the content title.

📅 Due Date: This displays when the assignment is due. It does not close access to submitting assignments. If students submit work past the due date, the submission will show the amount of time “late by”. Most content with a due date will automatically appear in the calendar.

📅 End Date: Closes access to content and assignment submission. After the end date, students will only be able to see the content title. If you want to give partial credit for late work, do not set an end date. Most content with an end date will automatically appear in the calendar.

📅 Special access: You can use special access conditions to open content access certain students outside the specified dates. This will be a case by case basis.

📅 Availability: You will sometimes see this header before the option to add a start date and end dates. These start and end dates work the same as listed above.

Note about Availability: Be careful with Availability and Hide from Users. Clicking the Hide From Users checkbox will hide content from users until you uncheck the box. If you add an Availability start date, that WILL NOT override the Hide from Users option. We recommend you only use one.

📅 Locking Options: In Discussions, you will see this header before option to add a start date and end dates. These start and end dates DO NOT work the same as listed above. These dates lock and unlock the ability to add to the discussion. Before the start date and after the end date, the discussion is read only.

📅 Display to calendar: Not all dates/times show up automatically on the Brightspace calendar. Click this box to push these dates out to the calendar.

Add dates when you create content

You can easily add dates as you are putting together your content.

When you are editing your Assignment, Quiz, Discussion, Survey, Self-assessment or Grade Item, click on the Restrictions tab. From here you can add a Due Date and Availability dates. It also shows you the time zone for the times you set.

For a Quiz, Discussion, Survey, Self-assessment, or Grade Item, you will also see the checkbox to Display in Calendar. It is shown under the Availability dates. This pushes your availability dates to the Brightspace calendar.

A Note about Grade Items: We do NOT usually recommend adding a date to a Grade Item. This restricts viewing of the grade, not any of the content for that Grade Item. One exception to this is if you want to release a set of grades all at once. Then you could set a Start Date to each Grade Item and all those Grade Items would be visible on that day.

A Discussion forum or topic has more date features with the Locking Options. You can also check Display in Calendar to push these dates out to the calendar.

Add or edit dates from your Content page

You can add Start, Due, and End Dates from the Content page. You can do this for whole modules or individual topics. If you have already added dates when creating your content, you can edit dates from the Content page as well.

Module dates

To add dates to a module, click on Add dates and restrictions… under the module heading. This opens up a section to add dates.

Then you can click under Start Date, Due Date, or End Date to add a start, due or end date.

After you have entered your dates, click the Update button that appears to apply your dates.

Topic dates

To add dates to a topic, click on the divet button next to the topic title to bring up the topic menu. Then choose Edit Properties In-place. Then you can follow the steps outline above for adding dates to a module.

Edit Topic or Module dates

Any dates that you have already added to a topic or module will show up under the title with a little clock icon. Click on the date to bring up the editing options.

Add dates to Checklist items

You can add a due date to individual Checklist items. These do not apply to whole Checklists or Checklist categories.

On the edit page for your checklist item, scroll down below the content editor. There is an option to add a Due Date for the Checklist item. Check the box next to Display in Calendar to push this Due Date to the Brightspace calendar.

Add dates to Announcements

You can add dates to Announcements. They only control when announcements are shown – they do not show up on the calendar.

On the edit Announcement page, availability dates are found after you scroll down past the headline and content editor. You can add a Start Date and End Date. The End Date will remove your announcement. You must check the box next to “Remove announcement based on end date” before you can add an End Date.

Create an event

It’s not all about due dates on the calendar! You can also set one-time events (like an optional lecture opportunity) or recurring events (like regular office hours).

Manage all dates with the Manage Dates tool

You can view and edit your dates all in one place with the Manage Dates tool. You can manage dates from

Watch the video below for a tour of the Manage Tool in Brightspace or keep scrolling for the video transcript and screenshots

Offset course dates

With the Bulk Offset Dates option, you can move a group of dates forward or backward by a specific number of days.

You might use this if you have copied you course and want to move all your dates forward for the new semester. Or there was a snow day so you want to extend the end date of this months assignments by a day.

Add your Brightspace Calendar to Google Calendar + default email notifications

You can easily add events and due dates from your Brightspace calendar into Google Calendar or other calendar apps using a subscribe URL. We’ll outline the steps for Google Calendar but you can use the same URL to add to other calendar apps.

This works for instructors and students to see class due dates and events.

Add your Brightspace Calendar to your iPhone calendar

Click on course calendar from your main Brightspace home page (not an individual course home page). To enable sharing of this calendar, go to Settings. Then choose Enable Calendar Feeds and click Save.

Now that our page is reloaded, you have this new button that says Subscribe, so we’re going to click on that.

From here you can choose which calendars to subscribe to. You can do all calendars and tasks which will pull in everything from Brightspace, including all your courses. Tasks only or specific courses or just calendar for Meredith College.

I’m going to do all calendars and tasks and then it gives you a URL that we’re going to copy. So just copy that URL and we’ll
use it for the iPhone calendar. Then we can just close this.

On your iPhone, go into Settings, then choose Mail > Contacts > Calendars.

Choose Add Account, then Other, and then Add Subscribed Calendar.

Head over to the Apple Subscribe to calendars in Mac to see full instructions based on your macOS version.