How do I see all my assignments from every class in one place?

To see all assignments from every class in one place, open your course site’s Calendar, tick every class you’re taking in the list beside it, and switch to the agenda (or list) view. That gives you every dated assignment, quiz and exam in one scrolling list. It still misses two things: work with no due date, and dates that only appear in your syllabus or an announcement. The steps below cover both, and take about 15 minutes the first time.

Step 1: Turn on every class in the calendar

1. On your course site, open Calendar from the main menu.
2. Find the list of calendars, usually on the right side, with one entry per class (and one for you).
3. Make sure every class you’re taking this term is ticked.
4. Count them. Many course calendars only show a set number of classes at once, often 10, and group spaces for class projects count toward that number. If you’re near the limit, ticking one class can untick another without telling you.
5. Untick old classes from past terms and any group spaces you don’t need, so your current classes all fit.

Step 2: Switch to the agenda or list view

The month view is good for seeing busy weeks, but it hides details and cuts off days with many items.

1. At the top of the calendar, choose Agenda (some schools call it a list).
2. Scroll from today to the end of the term. Each item shows its class and its due time.
3. If your course site’s home page has a list view option (often under a menu on the dashboard), turn it on too. It shows upcoming work across your classes, grouped by date, and lets you mark things done.

Both views are only as complete as what your professors put in with a date. That’s the gap the next steps fill.

Step 3: Find the work that has no date

Some work never reaches a calendar because it has no due date set on the course site. Look in three places for each class:

1. Modules (or weekly folders). Open the current week and the next one. Readings, discussion posts and practice sets often live here without a date.
2. Pages and files the professor links to from the home page, such as a course schedule or a weekly plan.
3. The syllabus. Read the schedule table, if there is one, all the way down.

Write anything undated onto your own list with the date you’ll do it.

Step 4: Add the dates that are only in the syllabus

This is the step most students skip, and it’s where exams hide. Professors often post an exam on the course site only a week or two before it happens, even though the date has been in the syllabus since day one.

When we checked five real courses’ syllabi against their course calendars, about half of the term’s exams were still missing from the course calendar in week 6. In two of the five courses we checked, the syllabus and the course site disagreed about a date.

To add syllabus dates:

1. Open each syllabus and find every exam, project, paper and presentation date.
2. Add each one to the calendar you actually look at. Our free syllabus to calendar tool does this for you: paste the syllabus text, check the dates it finds, and download a calendar file you can open in Google Calendar or Apple Calendar. It runs in your browser, and nothing is sent anywhere.
3. If the syllabus and the course site disagree, ask your professor which one is right (a short, polite email is fine). Don’t guess.

Step 5: Put it all where you’ll see it

A list you have to remember to open doesn’t help much. Pick one place you look every day:

• Your phone’s calendar. Your course site gives every student a calendar feed link you can subscribe to in Google Calendar or Apple Calendar. Our guide to getting your course calendar into Google Calendar walks through it, and Apple Calendar works the same way with the same link. Note that Google refreshes subscribed calendars on its own schedule, often several hours apart, and has no refresh button.
• A paper planner or notes app. Fine, as long as you copy new items in each week.

Step 6: Do a weekly check

Assignments get added and changed all term. Once a week, on the same day:

1. Open the calendar’s agenda view and look at the next two weeks.
2. Skim the announcements from each class for anything with a date.
3. Open the current module in each class for undated work.
4. Compare against your list and fix anything new or moved.

Ten minutes on a Sunday evening is usually enough. If a date moved, our guide on how to know when a professor moves a due date covers how to catch it sooner.

Why you can’t see all assignments in one view

Your course site wasn’t built for juggling five classes at once. Each class is set up by a different professor, and each uses the site differently:

• One posts everything with dates. It shows up everywhere.
• One uses modules and pages. Work is there, but undated, so no calendar or to-do list sees it.
• One keeps the real schedule in the syllabus PDF and posts each exam a week before.
• One announces changes in class or in an announcement instead of editing the assignment.

The calendar and the to-do list only collect items that have a date set on the course site. Anything else is invisible to them. That’s not a bug you can switch off: it’s how those views are built.

There’s also the class limit from step 1. If you’re taking six classes plus a lab and three group projects, you may be over the limit without knowing it.

Where Coursebird fits

Coursebird builds that one list for you. It reads your classes through the same calendar feed link your course site gives every student, adds class announcements, and with the Coursebird Sync browser extension reads grades and course pages too. Every assignment, quiz and exam from all your classes lands in one list, this week first, and what you’ve turned in is checked off.

From each syllabus (the extension finds it, or you add it), Coursebird picks out the exam dates and deadlines, including ones your professor hasn’t posted yet. Each one shows the line it came from, so you can check it. In the phone app, reminders go out 24 hours and 2 hours before each deadline, and three times for every exam: a week out, the day before and that morning.

It’s read-only (it never submits or changes anything), and your data stays on your own device. Coursebird is in beta, and you can join the list from this page. See how the list works.