Please Note: This content was originally posted on the date above on the IT News on Campus blog at St. Mary’s College of Maryland.

Have you been frustrated by the calendar in your Blackboard course?

Would you like to manage your course calendar in Google right along with your personal calendar?

You can create a course calendar that contains all the important date and event information related to your course, and make it available in Blackboard.

Some of the advantages of using a Google Calendar are:

1. Updating your course calendar in Google automatically updates the the embedded calendar in Blackboard. Once you have embedded the calendar in your Blackboard course, any changes you make to events will be automatically updated when students view the calendar in Blackboard.
2. Students can make the calendar available in their own Google Calendar app, so they can overlay the course calendar with their own primary calendar or copy the events to their primary calendars.
3. All the features of Google Calendars are available for use, including the ability to invite students to an event, and keep a running tally of the responses.

To get you started, we have created a video that walks you through the steps of creating the calendar, adding events, and embedding the calendar in a Blackboard course.

If you need additional assistance getting your Google course calendar set up, please contact the IT Support Center by creating a ticket at http://itsupport.smcm.edu, and we will be happy to walk you through the process.

If you have any additional tips on using Google Calendars this way, please share them by commenting below.