Effective time management is crucial to college success.
You may have gotten through life, and school, without a calendar in the past, but you need a good system to be most effective and successful now and in the future.
Use the information gained from this activity to help you make decisions regarding how many classes to take, how many hours you can work, if you can attend an event, etc.
If nothing else, this will be a useful exercise to examine how much free and obligated time you have.
There are many options for keeping an academic calendar, both electronic and physical. Regardless of the method you choose, the content you add is the same.
Your class meetings
Your work schedule (if you have a job) and any other committed time.
Down time: including sleep, exercise, meditation, etc.
General Homework / Study time
The Federal Regulation and FGCU Policy 2.013 definition of a credit hour is "one hour of classroom or direct faculty instruction and a minimum of two hours of out of class student work each week for approximately fifteen weeks for one semester".
For face to face classes, for every hour the class meets (usually around 3 per week for full semester classes), you should schedule 2-3 hours outside of class for homework and studying.
For each online class, you should schedule:
9-12 hours per week for full semester classes (usually around 16 weeks long)
12-16 hours per week for full summer semester classes (usually around 12 weeks long)
24-32 hours per week for mini semester classes (usually around 6 weeks long).
Specific Tasks to be done during Homework / Study Time
Based on the Canvas calendar, add additional events for times when you are going to work on assignments leading up to their due dates for all of your classes. The Canvas assignment events are view only but you can copy events from the Canvas calendar view into your academic calendar and then modify them. All assignments for all classes will not necessarily be in Canvas so check your syllabi.
For example, if you have discussions due every Tuesday and Thursday night, schedule 30-60 minutes to complete them every Monday and Wednesday. Schedule time for assigned readings. Schedule time to study leading up to tests.
Outlook is the calendar product from Microsoft. The benefit of the Outlook Calendar is that FGCU Eagle accounts are Microsoft accounts and Outlook is integrated with Eagle mail, Skype, and Teams.
From the Eagle mail page, outlook.office.com, click the calendar icon at the bottom left.
To add the Canvas Calendar in Outlook, click Add calendar -> Subscribe from web
Outlook integrates with Microsoft To Do for tasks. Click the checkmark icon at the bottom left.
Add the Outlook app and Tasks app to your phone.
Subscribe (one time only)
Conveniently, Canvas automatically makes a calendar entry for each assignment within Canvas. You only need to do this one time and it will sync for all of your classes for the rest of your time at FGCU.
Events set for 11:59 pm, like assignment due dates, only appear as small boxes at the bottom of the screen.
On a Mac, you need to add the calendar on Outlook.com and then it will appear in the app.
Events set for 11:59 pm, like assignment due dates, only appear as small boxes at the bottom of the screen.
It may take a few minutes for the Canvas events to appear.
Copy Events
Once integrated in Outlook, you can use Ctrl+C to copy events on the Canvas calendar and then switch to your personal calendar and use Ctrl+V to paste them so you can move them around to schedule when you will work on them.
How to add and sync calendar events in the Windows 10 Calendar app
Better notifications and agenda view when clicking on clock