Everything you need to know about creating and managing your study schedule.
Modulus automatically generates a personalized study schedule from your Canvas calendar. It analyzes your upcoming assignments and deadlines, then creates optimized work blocks that fit around your existing commitments. You can review and adjust the plan before exporting it to your favorite calendar app.
https:// and ends with .ics)Keep this URL private - anyone with this link can see your calendar.
Paste your Canvas ICS URL and configure your preferences (study hours, planning horizon, etc.)
Modulus analyzes your assignments and creates an optimized study schedule
Review your schedule on an interactive calendar. Drag, resize, or delete blocks as needed
Export your finalized plan as an ICS file and import it into Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, or Outlook
The number of days into the future to plan for. A 14-day horizon means Modulus will only schedule work blocks for assignments due within the next 2 weeks.
Tip: Start with 7-14 days if you prefer to focus on immediate deadlines. Use 21-30 days for a longer-term view.
Your preferred daily study limit. Modulus tries to keep each day's work blocks under this amount, but may exceed it if necessary to meet deadlines.
Example: With a 4-hour soft cap, most days will have around 4 hours of study time scheduled.
Your absolute maximum daily study limit. Modulus will never schedule more than this many hours on a single day, even if it means some work cannot be scheduled.
Example: An 8-hour hard cap ensures you never have more than a full workday of studying scheduled.
When enabled, Modulus will not schedule any work blocks on Saturdays or Sundays. Your assignments will be spread across weekdays only.
If you have existing commitments (work, classes, activities), you can provide a second ICS calendar with your busy times. Modulus will avoid scheduling study blocks during these periods.
Tip: Export your Google Calendar or Outlook calendar as an ICS file to use as your busy calendar.
Use the view buttons at the top of the calendar to switch between:
Drag to move: Click and hold a work block, then drag it to a new time slot.
Resize: Hover over the top or bottom edge of a block until you see a resize cursor, then drag to make the block longer or shorter.
When you manually move or resize a work block, it becomes anchored (shown in darker blue). Anchored blocks are "locked" in place - if you regenerate your schedule or edit other blocks, anchored blocks will not be moved or changed.
Why this matters: If you've carefully scheduled a study session at a specific time, anchoring ensures it stays put even when other parts of your schedule adjust.
Each assignment has a total estimated effort (in hours). When you delete or shorten a work block, Modulus redistributes that time to other non-anchored blocks for the same assignment. This ensures you still have enough time scheduled to complete the assignment.
Example: If an assignment has 6 hours of total effort spread across three 2-hour blocks, and you delete one block, the remaining two blocks will each become 3 hours.
Note: Anchored blocks are never adjusted during redistribution.
Click on a work block to select it, then click the delete button (trash icon) or press the Delete key. The time from the deleted block will be redistributed to other blocks for the same assignment.
ICS (iCalendar) is a universal calendar format supported by virtually all calendar applications.
When you download your study plan, you get an .ics file
that can be imported into Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, Microsoft Outlook, and more.
Modulus only imports assignments within your planning horizon. If you set a 14-day horizon, assignments due more than 14 days from now won't appear. You can increase the horizon in your import settings.
Also check that your Canvas calendar feed includes all your courses - some courses may need to be manually enabled in Canvas calendar settings.
Yes! You can create a new plan at any time with updated settings or preferences. However, changes you make in Modulus won't automatically sync to your external calendar - you'll need to re-export and re-import the ICS file.
Tip: Some calendar apps will merge or duplicate events when re-importing. Consider deleting the old study events before importing a new schedule.
Modulus uses assignment metadata and heuristics to estimate effort. You can adjust the total effort for any assignment in the preview by clicking on it and modifying the effort hours. This will redistribute the work blocks accordingly.
Make sure you copied the complete URL, including the https:// at the beginning
and .ics at the end. The URL should look something like:
https://canvas.instructure.com/feeds/calendars/user_abc123.ics
If you're still having issues, try generating a new calendar feed URL in Canvas.
Modulus only reads the calendar data from your Canvas ICS feed - it cannot access your grades, submissions, or other Canvas content. Your ICS URL is stored securely and only used to fetch calendar data when generating your study plan.
If you have questions not covered here, please reach out and we'll be happy to assist.