Dropbox Due Date and End Date

There are two "closing" dates that can be set for a dropbox folder:

• The Due Date is the date when submissions are due (this is the date that appears automatically in the course calendar)
• The End Date is the date when the dropbox folder is no longer accessible to students (this date does not appear in the course calendar)

Both dates are optional, and the system will not allow an end date to be set before the due date. If a student submits a file between the two dates, the list of submissions indicates how late the submission was.

Rubrics, Dropbox, and Grades

Rubric assessment does not carry through to the grades tool. The score does (and comments can) if you use it as a scoring rubric but not the rubric assessment data. So linking the same rubric to a dropbox folder and its associated grade item *will not* automatically the rubric data from the dropbox folder to the associated grade item. Students can see rubric data but they have to look at the feedback within the dropbox tool. If you want the rubric data visible on the grade tool you will need to provide that data manually. Provide overall feedback for the grade item directing students to see rubric assessment info within the dropbox tool. 

Copying course material and notifications

Be aware that when copying material into a course offering that is active, any users in that course offering who subscribe to notifications will receive notifications as appropriate for the new materials as soon as they appear. This can confuse students if you copy a News item, for example, that includes information about upcoming class events or due dates and you plan on editing those dates after you copy the News items over. (Users who sign up for News notifications receive an alert immediately when a News item is posted.) Similar situations will occur with Dropbox folders and Quizzes, which provide notifications two-days before end dates or due dates.

The decision to receive notifications is the student's, and they can choose text messages and/or email. Safer options are either to change dates and/or content in the source course offering before copying stuff over or creating items manually.

D2L Grader App for the iPad

The Grader app allows instructors to download submissions to dropbox folders in their course offerings for offline grading. It is free and only available for the iPad.

Inadvertent emails

In a multiple-enrollment course offering it is possible to email students in other sections inadvertently. This was discovered in the Dropbox tool, where attempting to email all users without submissions (while looking only at one section) also included students who had not submitted files to that same Dropbox folder in the other section.

Thanks to Constance Carter for sharing this with me.

Dropbox Draft Feedback

Feedback for dropbox submissions can be saved in draft status. This makes it possible for instructors to publish feedback simultaneously for an entire class. The Save Draft button is the first part of this process. Once ready to make the feedback available to students, the Folder Submissions page can be used to publish the feedback for all students (first click in the check box to Select all rows, then click the Publish Feedback link).

One Dropbox, Different Due Dates

In a multiple-enrollment course offering, you may have an assignment that has a different due date for each of the classes. For example, the paper for your MW class may have a due date of April 18 and the same paper for your TTh class may have a due date of April 19. There is a one-to-one relationship between a dropbox folder and a grade item, so using the same dropbox folder for both classes requires use of "Special Access" to give students in one class a different due date. Students will see the correct due date when they visit the dropbox folder inside the course offering but (as noted in the video), the automatic calendar entry for the folder will only show the "main" due date. [VIDEO DEMO]

Another option for this is to create different dropbox folders for each section, which could have different due dates and could each be conditionally released so that they are visible only to students enrolled in that section. However, this would complicate the Grades tool. Individual grade items can be conditionally released, but then the final grade item would include both of the items. So then the Grades calculation setting to drop ungraded items should be selected.

Here are some images of a sample involving Frodo Baggins and Bilbo Baggins, who are enrolled in different sections in the same course offering:

1. The Manage Grades page. Note that two of the grade items are set to be conditionally released and that their maximum points differ:

2. Frodo's Grades page (he is enrolled in the TTh section). Note his maximum points for his Final Calculated Grade do not include the item Quiz 2, which is not yet scored.

3. Bilbo's Grades page (he is enrolled in the MWF section):

Rubrics and the Dropbox

The Rubrics tool can be used in conjunction with the Dropbox to make grading student submissions more efficient, with objective-based feedback that can be customized. [VIDEO DEMO]

Note the following about the Rubrics tool and Grades: It is a current weakness of D2L that the only place where the score from a rubric can be pushed to the grades page automatically is in the dropbox. Rubrics attached to a discussion topic and quiz do not push scores into the grades tool. D2L’s design philosophy for the rubric tool is strongly connected to the competencies (SLO) tool and its connection to grades appears to be an afterthought for the programmers. I hope that future versions of D2L will allow for discussion and quiz rubrics to push scores to the grades tool.

Download Turnitin.com Originality Reports

When a document is submitted to Turnitin.com via the dropbox, its contents become part of Turnitin.com's database. Instructors can access the Originality Report as long as a dropbox is visible, which will be three years. At any time an instructor can download the report by clicking the download button at the bottom of the Originality Report window.

This creates a PDF file for storage on a local computer. The file does not include any identifying information on the author, so including that as part of the filename will make finding this file easier. This can only be done one submission at a time.

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.

Recover Dropbox Files for Dropped Students

If a student submitted files to a dropbox folder and then dropped the course, the date and time of the student's submissions appear on the dropbox User Progress page (user progress for dropped students is accessible from the Reports page of the Classlist). However, any files submitted are not accessible unless the student is enrolled in a course offering. So you have to re-enroll a dropped student's user account to access any dropbox files submitted while that student was enrolled in the class.

Special Access for a Dropbox Folder

You can use the special access tool on the Restrictions tab of a dropbox folder to give individual students extra time to submit a paper. This is especially useful if you have plagiarism detection turned on for a folder and a student has submitted a file format that is not recognized by Turnitin.com. [VIDEO DEMO]

Hide Dropbox Attached Files

When a file is attached to a dropbox folder using the Add a File button, it is accessible to students outside the availability window set on the Restrictions tab. To hide the file from students until the availability window is open, link it instead inside the Custom Instructions field. The file should first be uploaded to the Manage Files area (access this via the Content page or the Edit Course page). Then insert a quicklink into the Custom Instructions field and choose the Course File category. When the availability window opens for that dropbox folder, students can click on the folder name to view its instructions, and the file will be linked there. [VIDEO DEMO]

Turnitin and the Dropbox

The Turnitin.com plagiarism-detection service is now integrated with the dropbox. This is a single switch on the Properties tab for a dropbox folder immediately underneath the folder name:

Turning this switch on means documents submitted to this folder will be checked for plagiarism as if the student or instructor had submitted it directly to Turnitin.com. The instructor can decide whether to show the Originality Report to students and whether to make the process automatic for all submissions or selectively. The bottom of the Properties tab includes a section "Plagiarism Detection Options" if this switch is on. Turnitin currently accepts the following file types for submission: MS Word (.doc), WordPerfect (.wpd), PostScript (.eps), Portable Document Format (.pdf), HTML (.htm), Rich Text (.rtf) and Plain Text (.txt). All files submitted to Turnitin must be text based. Papers which have been scanned must be sent through Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software before they can be submitted to Turnitin.

Once enabled and a report finishes processing, the folder list will show a color-coded label showing the percentage of plagiarized text in that document.

Note: If you allow students to do multiple submissions to the dropbox folder, Turnitin will treat subsequent submissions to the same dropbox folder as "revisions," meaning that those subsequent submissions will not consider the text from the original submission as a similar source.

Extra Unread Files in the Dropbox

If a student is dropped from your class and submitted any files that had not been marked "read" to a dropbox folder before the drop, those files will still appear as unread to you and show up on your course home page in the Updates widget as well as the list of unread files for that folder on the dropbox page. When you click on the dropbox name, the default list is by student. Dropped students will not appear on that list, so you will not be able to change the read status of those files on this page. To do that, click on the Files tab to see all of the files uploaded to this folder, including those from dropped students. On this page you can change the read status of a file by clicking on the envelope icon.

Certain Characters in Filenames Cause Dropbox Problems

The following characters if used in a filename of a file that is submitted to the dropbox will cause the dropbox to be inaccessible by faculty:

 \ / : * ? " < > | 

Students will continue to be able to submit assignments even if the dropbox is inaccessible.

View Solution to Homework Submitted via Dropbox

If you have students turn in homework assignments via the dropbox and want them to see the solution after they submit, there are a couple of ways to do this:

Give the students the homework solution file as part of the feedback for the assignment. On the Leave Feedback page there is a button Add a File that you can click to add a file from your local computer that will only be visible to that student. You could wait to provide feedback to students until after the assignment is due if you are concerned about the early submitters sharing the solution file with their classmates.

Another option is to include the file as part of the grade item for that dropbox folder instead of as part of the dropbox folder feedback. This allows you to control exactly when the file appears; you may want to let students know in the Custom Instructions field for the dropbox folder where and when the solutions file will appear.. First, upload the file to your Manage Files area:

• Click Edit Course on the navbar.
• Click Manage Files and then click Upload
• In the window that opens, click Browse to find your homework solutions file and then click Upload

Now your file is ready to be quicklinked from the grades area:

• On the Grades page, click the Manage Grades button
• Click on the Enter Grades icon for the item associated with the dropbox folder
• Click Show details and overall comments
• In the Overall Comments box, insert a quicklink to the course file you uploaded above - don't forget to click Save

If you do not want students to see the solutions file until after the assignment is due, you can make the grade item appear at that time:

• While on the Manage Grades page, click on the name of the grade item associated with the dropbox folder to edit it
• Select the Restrictions tab and choose a Start Date for the item's visibility - don't forget to click Save

A third option is to create a content topic that includes the homework solution and set the availability date for that item to take place after the assignment due date. As with the option to attach it to a grade item, you may want to let students know in the Custom Instructions field for the dropbox folder where and when the solutions file will appear.

Finally, you can use release conditions to display the homework solution automatically as soon as students receive feedback from you. One of the condition types is "Receive Feedback on Dropbox Folder." You can create a release condition using this type (D2L will prompt you to select a dropbox folder) and limit the content topic to students who meet this criterion.

Students can Break a Dropbox Folder

If a student renames a file in the middle of submitting it to a dropbox folder, that folder is locked for the instructor only. All students, including the one who caused the problem, can still submit files, and the folder's availability will change as originally scheduled. If this happens, contact the help desk because Desire2Learn must be involved in the fix. No data is lost.