User Progress

Desire2Learn automatically records a variety of data on activity associated with its various tools. In general, this data can be accessed from three areas:

1. The tool itself (e.g., View Reports for the Content tool)
2. Each student's View Progress link from the Classlist
3. The View User Progress link on the Edit Course page

Use Los Rios Google Apps to View PowerPoint

This is cross-posted on Greg's Google Blog

Though Desire2Learn includes an inline file viewer that displays PowerPoint presentations within the browser, there are still situations where students will need or want to download the presentation file to a local computer. For those who are off campus and do not have access to Microsoft Office, one option is to use Los Rios Gmail and Google Apps. A PowerPoint file can be uploaded to Drive and Docs, and Google will convert it to the Google Presentation format. It can then be viewed within the browser and downloaded as a PDF file for printing.

Remove Quiz Results from the Grades Tool

The results of quizzes in Desire2Learn do not have to be posted as grades. Those scores can still be viewed on the Quizzes page, be shared with students, and used as criteria for Release Conditions. In case you decide not to count those results as part of the grade after attempts have been submitted, here are the steps to remove those results from grades after the quiz has been taken by students:

1. On the Properties tab for the quiz, choose the "None" option for Grade Item and then click the Save button.
   
   
   
   Note that the Auto Export to Grades option can no longer be changed.
2. On the Manage Grades page, click on the "Delete" link on the More Actions button. This takes you to the Delete Grade Items and Categories page; from here you can select the grade item that was formerly associated with the quiz and then click the Delete button. Desire2Learn will prompt you to warn that removing the grade item will also remove its associated scores. This does not remove the quiz attempts; they can still be viewed via the quizzes tool.

Make a Course Offering Active

Are your students complaining they cannot see your course offering on Desire2Learn? It may be that your course offering is not active. By default, all new course offerings are inactive. This means that enrolled instructor users can see them but enrolled student users cannot.

You can easily tell if your course is inactive. On your D2L homepage the word "inactive" appears in italic type following the name of the course. you will see a gray icon next to the course link, this means your course is inactive.

To change this status, take the following steps:

1. Click on the name of the course offering to enter it.
2. Click on the Edit Course link to go to the Course Administration page.
3. Click on the link for Course Offering Information.
4. On the Course Offering Information page, there is a check box to make the course active. Click in this box and then click the Save button at the bottom of the page. Your course offering will be visible immediately to any students whose user accounts are enrolled in your Desire2Learn course offering.

"Grade All" Applies to Withdrawn Users

When using "grade all," the grade override also affects any withdrawn students for the course offering, even though the confirmation dialog only counts currently enrolled students. A withdrawn student who does not have a score for that grade item does not have the "grade all" score applied. This is a problem especially for course offerings that use the option for grading attendance mentioned in another blog entry.