Summary for Suggestions Forum – Calendar Experience & Functionality Improvements

The current calendar experience appears misaligned with typical student workflows and user expectations. At present, the Personal Calendar is given more prominent visibility on the main landing page than the Catalog Calendar, despite the Personal Calendar offering limited value to most users prior to authentication.

The Personal Calendar primarily serves enrolled students by displaying scheduled course days and course start/end dates. However, students already gain access to this functionality within their authenticated student dashboard after logging into the platform. Presenting the Personal Calendar as a primary front-page feature creates confusion for users who may not understand its purpose or relevance, particularly since there is little contextual explanation provided regarding what the calendar displays.

In contrast, the Catalog Calendar provides significantly greater value to both prospective and current users by surfacing upcoming course offerings, session dates, and class availability. Making the Catalog Calendar more visible on the landing page would improve discoverability of important scheduling information and better support course planning and registration workflows. Currently, placing the Catalog Calendar behind additional navigation steps reduces accessibility to information that is likely more useful to the majority of users.

From a user experience perspective, homepage visibility would be better utilized by prioritizing the Catalog Calendar and course scheduling information, while keeping Personal Calendar functionality within authenticated dashboard areas where it is most contextually relevant.

Additionally, there is an opportunity to improve the functionality of the calendar display itself. Currently, classes appear to be represented only by their initial session start date rather than spanning across the full scheduled duration of the course. Displaying classes as duration-based calendar events would provide users with a clearer visual understanding of timelines, overlaps, pacing, and overall time commitments. This enhancement would significantly improve the usefulness of the calendar as a scheduling and planning tool rather than simply a reference for start dates.