It is the source of truth
Assignments, due dates, readings, grades, announcements, and submission happen in the learning management system. If it is on the LMS, you are responsible for it, whether or not it was said in class. Checking it once a day is a baseline habit, like checking email.
Fix the notifications first
The defaults are usually wrong — too many or too few. Set it to notify you (by email and, if you want, push) for: new announcements, new assignments, due-date changes, grade postings, and feedback comments. Turn off the noise (every discussion reply). Do this in week one for every course, so a due-date change actually reaches you.
Use the calendar and to-do list
The LMS aggregates every course's due dates into one calendar and a to-do list. Subscribe to that calendar feed from your own calendar app so assignments show up alongside the rest of your life. This is the single best defense against a deadline in one course sneaking up while you are focused on another.
Know how submission works before it matters
For each course: how do you submit (file upload, text box, external tool), what file types are accepted, is there a similarity-check step, does it show you a confirmation, and is late submission open or locked? Do a practice submission early. "It didn't upload" at 11:58 p.m. is avoidable.
Check your grades against the syllabus
The LMS gradebook shows what the instructor has entered, weighted the way they set it up — which is sometimes misconfigured early in the term. Know your syllabus's grading scheme, sanity-check the running total, and ask the instructor if something looks off. Do not wait until finals to discover a whole category was missing.
When it breaks
The platform has outages and quirks. If you cannot submit, screenshot the error with a timestamp, email the work to the instructor before the deadline as proof, and contact the Technology Help Desk. Instructors are generally understanding about a documented platform failure and not understanding about "it was being weird."
Fictional information
UW–Porter Falls is a work of parody. Every office, person, building, phone number and statistic on this page is invented; nothing here describes a real institution or a service you can actually contact.