On many courses there are often many events taking place, from exams, deadlines, guest speakers, field trips. So how do you let learners when all these events are? How do you provide them with updates when things change? How will they access the list or calendar of events?
There are various ways of providing a calendar of events to learners, from paper to an Outlook calendar. Many VLEs such as Moodle do have a calendar function and this can be used to provide learners with a calendar.
The reason for using the VLE is that if this is the place where learners are going to get course information, download resources, converse in forums, etc… then it’s the ideal location to keep learners updated with what’s happening and when. It can be easily updated when those inevitable changes happen.
it’s useful if the calendar on the VLE can be exported, for example Moodle can export its calendar as an ics file. This ics file can then be imported into other calendars such as on a mobile phone, or a calendar app on their computer. This way learners can take the event calendar with them or access it with their other calendars.