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.

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.

Upload Videos to Google Drive and Embed in Desire2Learn

This is cross-posted on Greg's Google Blog

Video files can be uploaded to an instructor's Los Rios Google Drive and then embedded within a course offering on Desire2Learn. This video shows how to do this and includes an option to prohibit downloading by viewers.

Use Los Rios Google Apps to Create an Image Gallery and Share via Desire2Learn

This is cross-posted on Greg's Google Blog

The Google Drive application can be used to create an online image gallery with thumbnails that link to higher-quality images.

Customize the Student Resources link group

The Student Resources link group can be customized. The navbar must be editable, which means the default navbar has already been copied and applied.

Release Final Grades and Show Current Grade

The final grade item cannot be seen by students until it has been "released":

Confirm your calculation options to make sure that students are seeing the correct information. Click the Settings link and then the Calculation Options tab:

At the bottom of the page, decide whether to drop ungraded items (this turns your "final" grade into a "current" grade instead). Also decide whether to keep the final grade updated. If you decide to drop ungraded items, you can rename the final grade item by clicking on its name (while in Manage Grades view) and typing a new name (e.g., "Current Grade" or "Grade as of Today").

If the “drop ungraded items” button is checked, then the points possible for the Final Grade is a sum of all the grade items for which that student has received a score. Here is an example with the drop ungraded items turned OFF: 

Exam 1 (100 points possible):	80
Exam 2 (100 points possible):	90
Final Exam (300 points possible):	- (not yet taken)
Final Grade:	170/500

 Here is the same grade book with drop ungraded items turned ON 

Exam 1 (100 points possible):	80
Exam 2 (100 points possible):	90
Final Exam (300 points possible):	- (not yet taken)
Final Grade:	170/200

 Spot the difference? In the second example, because the student has not yet taken the final exam, the Final Grade should instead be thought of as the “Current Grade” and perhaps renamed appropriately.

• Click the Enter Grades icon for the final grade item. You can find this on the action menu for the item.

• Click the Release All button. You can find this on the action menu for the Final Grades heading at the top of the page.

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

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.

Using the Role Select for My Courses

Some users are enrolled in course offerings in different roles. For example, at CRC all of the faculty are enrolled as Member in a course offering used to conduct elections for the academic senate. Those who also use D2L for teaching will therefore also be enrolled as Instructor in other course offerings. Another example is the Prior Term role, which instructors are encouraged to use so that they can de-clutter their homepages.

In the My Courses widget, only course offerings for one role display at a time. If you have different roles in different course offerings, you can select another role by clicking on the Role select menu and choosing another role. The system remembers your role from the most recent course offering you visited. It is easy to forget that you last visited a course offering in which you are enrolled as Prior Term, for example, and then return to your homepage and wonder where your current-term (Instructor) course offerings are.

If you only have one role that you are using (this applies to most students), then the Role select menu does not appear.

Class Progress Overview

I found a video on a new tool in Desire2Learn: the Class Progress tool. It is linked from the Edit Course page, and this video from Ralph Mayer at Midlands Technical College does an excellent job covering the tool:

Edit the Course Homepage and Create a Custom Widget

The default homepage for course offerings can be edited. Widgets can be removed and added, and custom widgets can be created.

Grades and Feedback

Enter Grades

Entering grades can be done a couple of different ways depending on whether the item has an "association" or not. Associated items are those that are connected to a quiz, discussion topic, or dropbox folder. For these items, the grade and feedback should come from the associated tool itself. If a grade item does not have an association, the grade and feedback must be entered manually on the Grade Item page.

In this example, there are three grade items titled "Document Analysis," and each is associated with a dropbox folder. When the students' submissions are evaluated in the associated dropbox folder, the score is automatically pushed to the appropriate grade item. If the score is changed in the dropbox folder, the score on the Grades page is also changed. The data does not flow the other way. If the score is changed on the Grades page, the score for the associated dropbox folder is not changed.

The same example has a couple of items that do not have an association. Both are titled "Midterm Exam." When grades are ready to be posted for these items, the action menu for each includes a link to the Enter Grades page for that item.

Individual Activity for Associated Items

For associated grade items, there is also a way to view an individual student's submissions (for a dropbox folder), attempts (for a quiz), or posts (for a discussion topic) from the grades page and without having to go to that tool. A link to the individual student's activity is on the Enter Grades page, whether that is the page for an individual item (accessed via the action menu and the Enter Grades link on the Manage Grades page) or the Enter Grades page, which shows all students and grade items in a grid.

Edit the Navbar

The navbar for a course offering is how the instructor shows which tools will be used in a course offering. The default set of course tools may not be the same tools in use, and instructors are encouraged to make changes as appropriate. Links can be added to course tools, course resources, and external web sites.

Create Custom Link Groups

The default course offering navbar includes a link group called "Student Resources." It is possible for instructors to create their own custom link groups.

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).

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")

Content

The content tool includes a feature called Course Overview, which instructors always see but students do not unless it is empty. Also instructors can drag and drop files directly into the browser window, and there is a file viewer so that students do not have to have a local desktop application to see certain files*. These features and more are demonstrated in the video for D2L content.

*: The following file types can be viewed with Desire2Learn's inline file viewer (all other types must be downloaded before they can be viewed):

• Images:
  • Graphics Interchange Format (.gif)
  • Joint Photographic Experts Group (.jpg, .jpeg)
  • Portable Network Graphics (.png)
• Text:
  • HyperText Markup Language (.htm, .html)
  • Microsoft Word (.doc, .docx)
  • Plain Text (.txt)
  • Portable Document Format (.pdf)
• Presentations:
  • Microsoft PowerPoint (.ppt, .pptx)

News Tool and the Text Editor

The News tool allows instructors to post important course information in a conspicuous place. The text editor includes options for linking to web sites outside of Desire2Learn and a handy tool to include multimedia.

Course Homepage and the Course Selector

The Desire2Learn course homepage includes several widgets that provide useful information to students and instructors. The persistent minibar allows easy navigation between course offerings and can be organized to make it more efficient.