How to get Blackboard assignment reminders on your iPhone

Blackboard lists due dates in its calendar and activity stream, but you have to go and look. Its Share Calendar option hands you a private link with every dated item, which a reminder app can watch for you. Blackboard Learn, from Anthology, runs coursework at many universities and colleges.

Step 1: Find your Blackboard calendar link

1. Open Blackboard in a web browser and go to Calendar.
2. Click the gear icon, then the ⋯ menu, then Share Calendar.
3. Copy the link.

The link looks something like https://yourschool.blackboard.com/webapps/calendar/calendarFeed/…/learn.ics. It’s private to you: anyone who has it can read your calendar, so don’t post it or share it.

Step 2: Get a reminder before every due date

1. Get Nudge from the App Store. It’s free.
2. Pick Blackboard from the list of school platforms. (Later on, it’s under Settings › School calendar, or tap “Paste my calendar link” on Home.)
3. Paste the link. Your dated work appears in one list, sorted by due date, and Pip starts watching.

You choose how early Pip speaks up: 1 day and 2 hours before a deadline, or 1 day, 3 hours and 1 hour before. Deadlines due together share one nudge, and nothing arrives overnight. Nudge rechecks your link whenever you open it or pull down to refresh, and if a teacher moves a date, it tells you what changed.

What comes through from Blackboard

Due dates for assignments, tests and other gradable items, plus course and personal calendar events, across all your courses. Calendar feeds share due dates, not grades or whether you’ve submitted, so mark work done in Nudge after you hand it in. For anything that isn’t in the feed, type it into Nudge like a text: “essay draft thursday 9am”.

Other ways to see Blackboard due dates on your iPhone

The same link works in any calendar app that can subscribe to a calendar. That’s a good way to see your due dates, but it isn’t built to remind you of them:

• Apple Calendar: in the Calendar app, tap Calendars, then Add Calendar › Add Subscription Calendar, and paste the link. Subscribed calendars are read-only, so you can’t add your own alert to each assignment, and school feeds usually don’t include alerts of their own.
• Google Calendar: on a computer, click + next to Other calendars › From URL. Google checks subscribed links on its own schedule, so new or moved due dates can take many hours to appear.

Nudge reads the link for one job: deadlines. It lists them by due date, counts down to the next one, nudges you before each, flags anything that moved, and lets you mark work done.

Troubleshooting

My Blackboard looks different.

Schools on the older Original view put the link on the Calendar page itself; look for an option to share the calendar or get an external calendar link.

Nudge says the link doesn’t work.

Make sure you copied the calendar link, not the page address. Blackboard calendar links usually end in learn.ics.

An item has no due date in Nudge.

Only dated items travel through the feed. Add the date in Nudge yourself, or type the assignment in as a new one.

Questions

Still stuck? Email [email protected] and say which platform you use, but please don’t send the link itself. See also: what a school calendar feed is and how to keep it private.

Blackboard is a trademark of its owner. Nudge is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Blackboard; it reads the standard calendar link Blackboard gives you.