22 February 2011

Student access to classlist

On the classlist students are only able to see people enrolled in the same section, which is why a student taking a lab / lecture class cannot see classmates enrolled in other labs. There are a couple of workarounds for instructors who want students to be able to contact each other online:
  • Create a separate document (content topic – new file is the best way) that has all students and their email addresses listed. It will not have the automatic connection to D2L’s send email tool but it will facilitate communication.
  • Another option is to create a discussion topic for students to introduce themselves. All students enrolled in a course offering can see all messages on a topic, and from there they can email each other using D2L’s send email tool.

Parallel Organization in Manage Files and Manage Content

A good reason to give the files in the Manage Files area an organization parallel to what you have in the Manage Content area, where folders in Manage Files match the modules in Manage Content, is it makes selective copying of content and course files much easier. I found it effective to create the folders before creating any content topics. That way when I click the Choose Destination button on the New Topic page I will have a place to stick the new or uploaded file that matches the module structure already in place.