Options for group discussion instructions

Making topic descriptions visible to students who have the Grid View option turned on for discussions is possible, as it is a setting for Grid View for instructors in a course. Unfortunately there is not a similar option for the forum description.

This becomes a challenge for forums that have multiple topics with the same description. For example, a class might be divided into dyads or triads and each group needs its own discussion topic. To make that description easily visible to each topic can be done by copying and pasting into the topic description for each of the fifteen to twenty (or more) topics for that group. (The main blog entry on groups has more information on group options.)

Another option is to add the discussion instructions as a thread and simultaneously post that thread to all of the discussion topics within the group forum. This is only an option when creating a new thread as part of the Posting Options at the bottom of the Compose window. The demo video shows how to do this.

One-on-one Groups for Private Conversations inside D2L

Groups and discussions tools can be used to set up private conversations between instructors and students inside a D2L course offering.

Bring back the Grid View in discussion

After listening to feedback from its clients (including Los Rios), D2L has reintroduced Grid View for discussions. This was removed in the update that was applied in Los Rios in summer 2014. Faculty who grade discussion participation were most likely to express concern about the removed feature. Now that it has returned, we are again able to choose personally how we view discussion and can manage assessment in the ways we did prior to summer 2014.

Grading Discussion

The summer 2014 update to D2L introduced some changes to the discussion tool that affect grading. No longer can discussion be graded in context and can only be done by looking at all of the posts for a user via the Topic Score dialog.

The embedded video shows the process that I now use to make things a little bit easier. It involves periodically switching between the Grades and Discussion tools.

Here are the steps that I take in the video:

1. Go to the Enter Grades page for the grade item that is associated with the discussion topic that has new messages.
2. Click on the View Submissions icon that indicates unread posts from this student.
3. Grade the submissions using the Topic Score dialog that pops up.
4. Switch to the Discussion tool to mark that student's graded posts as read.

The greatest risk is that I will miss a student's contribution that happens to occur during grading.

Grading Discussion (since August 2014)

Grading discussion as you read appears no longer to be an option, which is quite frustrating. Here are the steps I plan to follow:

1. Open two browser tabs, one on discussion and the other on grades
2. In the grades tab, click on the action menu for the discussion topic’s grade item and select Enter Grades
3. For each student who has contributed to that topic, a bubble appears in the Submissions column. Click on the bubble and a feedback window opens for that student for that grade item.
4. The feedback window includes all of the posts made by that student within that topic and a place to type a score and feedback. Make sure to check the Published box so the score is transferred to the grade item when Save is clicked.
5. In the other browser window, mark as read all the discussion posts that were just graded. Fortunately a topic can be searched for all posts by a student by typing the student’s name in the search box and then marking all results as read by clicking the action menu for any of the posts in the search results.

I guess I could grade in context by reading the posts in one window and then grading in the other.

Compose and Reply in Discussions

A discussion topic (this is not an option for a discussion forum) can be set up to require that students must compose a message (i.e., start a new thread) before they can read anything else that their classmates have written inside that topic. By turning this option on, instructors can more readily assume that students have not read what their classmates have posted prior to writing something in that topic. If this is turned on, the student can read and reply to other other messages after writing a new one.

The discussions statistics section of the User Progress page (accessed from the Classlist, not the Discussions Statistics page) shows a different count for messages that were original ("Authored") and responses to classmates ("Replied")

Print Discussion Messages

Desire2Learn now offers a way to collect several discussion messages on a printer-friendly window:

• You must look at your discussion in grid style, not reading style (choose this option on the Discussion Settings page).
• You can search for messages first, or select "All Messages" on the View menu to get a list of messages that can be sorted by any of the column headings (subject, author, or date).
• Click in the check box for one or more messages to select them.
• Click the printer icon: 

Collecting messages like this can only be done one discussion topic at a time. [VIDEO DEMO]

Who Has Not Completed a Certain Assignment?

You can use D2L's reporting features to find out quickly who has not participated in a particular discussion forum or topic, submitted a file to a dropbox folder, or taken a quiz.

Discussion - for discussion, click on the statistics icon ()for a particular forum or topic. The next page shows how many messages each student has read and authored inside that forum or topic. You can sort any of the columns by clicking on its header, so you can group all of the students who have not participated in that forum or topic. This page does not have an email link on it (already submitted as a feature request).

Quizzes - for quizzes, click on the grade icon () of a quiz and then search for all users who have not taken an attempt. (That's one of the options on the "Restrict to:" pull-down menu.) You can also go to the Grades navigation area, click on the statistics icon () for the quiz you want to view. Click on User Statistics and it will show you a graph bar of who hasn’t taken the quiz. From there you can select each student who hasn’t taken that particular test and email them using the email icon ().

Dropbox - for the dropbox, click on folder name to see the submitted files. The folder submissions page includes an email button () that you can use to contact the students who have not submitted a file to this folder.

Character limit for various text fields

The various identifying fields inside Desire2Learn have limits on the number of characters (including spaces) allowed:

Tool	Item	Field	Limit
News	Item	Headline	400
Content	Module and Topic	Title	150
Discussions	Forum and Topic	Title	250
Discussions	Message	Subject	150
Dropbox	Folder	Name	128
Quizzes	Quiz [Properties and Submission Views and Reports]	Name	256
Quizzes	Quiz [Restrictions]	Password	20
Quizzes	Question Library  [Sections and Random Sections]	Name	256
Quizzes	Question Library [Questions and Information]	Title	256
Quizzes	Question Library [Question Images]	Description	1791
Grades	Grade Item and Category	Name	127
Email	Compose New Message	Subject	256
Attendance	Register and Session	Name	128
Attendance	Session	Description	128
Calendar	Event	Title	128
Chat	Chat	Title	150
Chat	Chat	Message	400
Checklist	Checklist and Item	Name	128
Groups	Category and Group	Name	128
Groups	Group	Code	50

Audio Recordings

Users can record and attach audio files in Dropbox (students and instructors), Discussions (students and instructors), and News (instructors). A Record Audio button appears next to the Add a File button in the Attachments section of the page.

The user must have a sound card and a microphone connected to the computer, so students will not be able to use this from most on-campus computers. The user is prompted to allow Flash to access the system's microphone. Since Flash is required, iOS devices cannot use it. :-(

It records in WAV format, and the limit is 1 minute. The recording is not embedded but is attached to the news item. For discussions, multiple recordings can be added to a single message. For those dropbox folders limited to a single file per submission, the audio recording counts as that file so for those dropbox folders students should be warned not to use the audio recording.

Instructors know anonymous discussion authors

A discussion forum or topic can be set up to allow authors to post messages anonymously. Other students cannot see the author of anonymous messages but instructors can. Next to the date and time of the post is a blue info icon. Click on that to see the author's name. The first and last name appear but not the username.

Anonymous messages cannot be assessed.

Rating Discussion Messages

One of the options for discussion is to allow users to rate the messages that are there. This can be turned on by clicking the Settings link from the Discussion Area and then clicking in the box so that messages can be rated.

Note that this is an org unit setting, which means that it applies to all discussion messages within that course offering.

Once turned on, each user can apply a 1 to 5 stars to each message. The average rating of each message appears on the list of messages, and the number of ratings for a particular message is displayed when the message contents are visible. It is not possible to see what rating a particular user has applied to a particular message. Users can change their ratings of messages at any time.

View Edit History for Discussion Messages

Student users can edit (only) the discussion board messages they wrote, and instructors can view that editing history. [VIDEO DEMO]

Ongoing Discussion Grades

Instructors can use a combination of grade categories and hidden items to create an ongoing discussion grade, which saves having to re-read every post at the end of the semester when assigning an overall discussion grade:

• On the Grades page, create a new category with the name for your overall discussion grade (eg, "Online Participation").
• For each topic that you want to count toward your overall discussion grade, edit it and click the Assessment tab.
• Click the New Grade Item link and (in addition to the name and points possible), choose the category you picked and the option to "Hide this grade item" on the New Grade Item dialog box. There are two advantages to hiding the grade item: it makes the students' view of the grades page shorter, and it allows the instructor to make some topics optional without adding to the anxiety of students seeing they got zero points for a grade item.

The points possible for the category will be the sum of the points possible for the discussion topics it includes. As the instructor grades each discussion topic, the overall discussion score grows over the course of the class.

Thanks to Timaree Hagenburger for asking the question.

Safari and the Compose Button

The pop-up blocker in Safari prevents users from writing new messages in the discussion area. Clicking the Compose button is blocked, but clicking the Reply link works. The solution for the user is to turn off the pop-up blocker. Open the Safari preferences, select the Security tab, and click to turn off the pop-up blocker.

This issue affects the Safari browser on Macintosh and Windows computers. Since Safari is the default browser for the Macintosh computer, it is more likely to be an issue for people using that operating system.  Macintosh users who are using Firefox are not affected by this issue.

Disappearing Discussion Drafts

When composing a discussion entry, a user might be confused when clicking the Save Draft. The Save Draft button makes the message disappear. There are two ways to bring it back immediately:

1. Click the Refresh button at the top of the discussion frame (not the browser refresh button)
2. Select Drafts from the View menu and then click the Apply button to show the drafts for that particular topic.