How to Create a Course Calendar Using Google Calendar

Open Google Calendar and look for the "+" next to Other calendars in the left sidebar. Click Create new calendar. Give it a clear name your students will recognize — something like "Spring 2026 Coaching Cohort" or "Mindful Movement Course Schedule." Add a brief description explaining what the calendar covers.

Creating a separate calendar (rather than adding events to your personal calendar) is essential. It keeps your private schedule private, lets you share the course schedule independently, and makes it easy to archive the calendar once the cohort ends. You can toggle it on or off in your own view without affecting students.

Add an event for every live session in your course. Include the session topic in the event title — "Week 3: Building Your First Module" is more useful than "Session 3." In the event description, add any details students need: the Zoom link, preparation instructions, or materials to review beforehand.

If your sessions follow a regular pattern (every Tuesday at 1 PM for eight weeks), use Google Calendar's recurring event feature. Create the first event, set it to repeat weekly, and set an end date. Then customize individual event titles and descriptions for each week's topic. This saves time on setup while still giving each session a specific label.

Create all-day events for assignment due dates. Mark them with a consistent prefix so students can distinguish them from live sessions at a glance — something like "DUE: Lesson Plan Draft" or "DEADLINE: Peer Review Feedback." All-day events sit at the top of the calendar day, which gives them visual prominence without cluttering the hourly schedule.

If an assignment has both a soft deadline (submit for peer review) and a hard deadline (final submission), add both. Students appreciate knowing the full timeline upfront rather than discovering checkpoints one at a time.

Go to the calendar's settings (click the three dots next to the calendar name, then Settings and sharing). Under Access permissions for events, check Make available to public and set it to "See all event details." This generates a public URL.

Scroll down to Integrate calendar and copy the Public address in iCal format. This is the subscribe link. When students open it, their calendar app (Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, Outlook) will offer to subscribe. From that point on, any changes you make to the calendar appear on their end automatically.

Share this link in your welcome email, in the first lesson of your course, and in your course community space. Pin it somewhere visible. Students who join late will use the same link, and they'll immediately see the full remaining schedule.

In the calendar settings, set default reminders for all events. A 24-hour reminder and a 30-minute reminder work well for most courses: the first gives students time to prepare, the second serves as a "get to your desk" nudge. Students who subscribe to your calendar inherit these default reminders unless they override them in their own settings.

For high-stakes deadlines (a final project submission, for instance), add an extra reminder directly on that event — perhaps three days in advance. This doesn't affect other events on the calendar, just the one where the extra heads-up matters.

Google Calendar lets you assign colors to individual events. Pick one color for live sessions, another for deadlines, and a third for office hours. Students who subscribe will see these colors on their calendar, making it easy to scan the week and distinguish a mandatory session from an optional Q&A window. Consistency matters more than which colors you choose — just pick three and stick with them.

Put the video call link directly in each session event's description or location field. When a student clicks the event on their phone two minutes before the session starts, the link is right there. This eliminates the "where's the Zoom link?" scramble that plagues every cohort at least once. If your Zoom link changes between sessions, update the event — subscribers get the change automatically.

Once a cohort wraps up, uncheck the calendar in your sidebar to hide it from your daily view, but don't delete it. Students may refer back to session dates or deadlines for weeks after the course ends. When you run the next cohort, create a fresh calendar rather than editing the old one. This keeps each cohort's history intact and avoids confusing returning students who subscribed to the original.

Google Calendar has no RSVP tracking for subscribed calendars. You can see who was invited to a specific event if you use the invite feature, but the subscribe link — which is the most practical sharing method for courses — doesn't tell you who has subscribed or who has seen an event. If you need attendance confirmation, handle that separately through your course platform or a quick check-in form.

Sharing the link doesn't push events onto their calendar — they have to click it and confirm the subscription. Some students won't do this, especially those who are less comfortable with calendar apps. Include a brief "how to subscribe" note alongside the link (one sentence is usually enough: "Click the link, then click 'Add' when your calendar app opens").

Unlike Calendly, which can auto-generate a Zoom meeting for each event, Google Calendar requires you to add video links manually. If your course uses Google Meet, the integration is seamless — you can add a Meet link in one click. For Zoom, you'll need to paste the link into each event's description or location field yourself.