D2L-Tips

The default start day of a course is the first day of class, and the last is 2 weeks after the last day of class. If you are trying to make your course available to students early, you will need to change the date.

1. Enter the course
2. Click ‘Edit Course’ in your courses navigation bar.
3. Under the ‘Tools’ heading, click ‘Course Offering Information’
4. Ensure the checkboxes next to ‘Start Date’ and ‘End Date’ are checked. Then change the dates accordingly.
5. Click the ‘Save’ button on the lower right corner of the page.

Removing old groups when copying courses helps when setting up discussions, release conditions or other areas by preventing clutter and confusion linking to wrong groups.

To delete old groups, do the following:

1. In your courses navigation bar, click the ‘Groups’ link. You will see the first Group Category in your course. Click the menu next to ‘View Categories’ (letter ‘A” in the above screenshot) to choose a different group category.
2. Click the checkbox to the left of the group category name (labeled ‘C’ on the above screenshot).
3. Click the trashcan icon to delete the group category (labeled ‘B’ on the above screenshot).

Notes: you may experience an error message when deleting group cateogires and groups. D2L support is investigating the cause of this problem. If you experience an error, contact D2L Support, noting the course, the group category you were deleting, and if the group category has a dropbox, discussions or lockers associated with it.

If you view the gradebook by “Groups” and select “All Groups” to view the entire class, you may encounter the following message when entering grades: Internal Server (HTML 500).

Avoid the combination of viewing the gradebook by “Groups” and selecting “All Groups” when entering or changing grades. Either view the gradebook by “Groups” and select a single group such as ‘Section1′ , or view the gradebook by “User”.

This will allow you to enter grades without receiving the internal error message.

You may find it necessary to give a student another chance in a quiz. To allow a student to re-take a quiz, reset the student’s attempt.

1. In your course, click ‘Quizzes’ to enter the Quiz tool
2. Click the name of the quiz you wish to work with.
3. Click the ‘Grade Quiz’ pencil icon.
4. Just below the ‘Users’ ta, click the ‘Display Options’ link.
5. Click the ‘Allow Reset’ checkbox. Then click the ‘Save’ button

A trashcan icon should appear at the top of the list of attempts. Click the checkbox to the left of the attempt of the student you wish to reset. Then click the trashcan icon. The student can now retake his/her attempt.

Caution: For the student to retake the quiz, one of the following must be true:

1. The quiz must still be available for students to take. See the Restrictions tab in the quiz and verify the start and end dates of the quiz. -or-
2. The student must have special access granted. On the Restrictions tab in the quiz, scroll to the bottom. Under ‘Advanced Availability’, click ‘Add Special Access’ and set a start and end date for the student.

For Desire2Learn 8.1.3 MR7

If a question’s text or answer needs to be edited after students have taken the quiz, completed attempts are not automatically updated. To change which answers receive credit:

1. Click on the Grade Quiz (pencil) icon and then on the Questions tab;
2. Click on the name of the question you wish to edit and then click on the pencil
   icon to the right of the quiz date for the correct version of the
   question
3. You will now see the text of the question, as well as the response frequency for each answer. For some question types, you will notice bold numbers (for example: (1)) next to the answer options;
4. Under Grading Type:
   • “give all attempts” credit will give the same score to all students, regardless of their answer. Or…
   • You may “give to attempts with answer” credit. You may select or enter the
     appropriate answer, and assign the desired number of points. Notice
     that for question types with a dropdown menu with numbers, the numbers
     correspond to the bold numbers near the answers options above. For
     matching and multi select question types, it will be necessary to
     manually score every possible answer combination. For calculated types,
     it is possible to give credit for the following cases: results + units
     correct, just results, just units, number of significant digits, and
     both incorrect.
5. When finished, click Save Results.

Please Note:

• This solution does not work for the long answer question type.
• Using this process on matching and multi select question types requires giving all students equal credit, or manually scoring every possible answer combination.

If the “allow automatic export to grades” box was not checked on the quiz Properties tab, it will be necessary to click ExportTo: Grades to update the gradebook.

Content from Learn@UW. Updated for Desire2Learn 8.1.3 MR7

In order to work with the gradebook efficiently, you should avoid un-nessary calculations and manipulations. The following are some tips that may be helpful:

1. To speed up loading of the gradebook when you first click “Grades”, change the number of studens to display at a time. Next to “Paging“, change the number of users on the page to 25 or 10.
2. Make sure you are displaying the gradebook on only the portion that you need to work with. You should select to view by “groups” instead of “users” if your course contains multiple course sections. Make sure you are viewing a specific section, NOT “all sections”.
3. If you have a gradebook with many items, and you are trying to do grade entries, consider displaying ONLY items you need to work with. Go to ‘Grades Set UP”, then “Grade items to Display” and select only items you need.
4. If you are IMPORTING grade items from Microsoft Excel, try to import ONLY one grade item at a time. DO NOT try to import multiple items or the whole gradebook. Even if you only change a couple of grades, uploading the many grade columns means comparison of every cell (grade item) on the gradebook when it is not necessary.
5. If you plan to use the “drop highest or lowest grade” feature, set up the option at the end of the semester, NOT during the semester. The Drop function also involves intense comparison on every grade item in each category that may not be meaningful until all the grades are in. Set the option when time comes close to final grade calculation or when all items in the category are in.

Remember to un-check the “keeping final grade updated’ option too.

If you still experience gradebook entries issues, please report to d2l-support@uww.edu.

When you use “Copy Components” to copy grade items from one course to another, only the categories and items with their associated point values as well as course schemes are copied.

The various settings used in the original course are not copied over.

After copying the gradebook, you should review the following settings and adjust manually as appropriate:

1. Grade Calculations

a. Course Grading System: Points, Weighted, or Formula.
b. Final Grade Release to Students: Adjusted Final Grade or Calculated Final Grade.
c. Include Non-Graded Items in Final Grade: On or Off.
d. Automatically Keep Calculated Final Grade Updated: On or Off.

2. Course Scheme Used: Percentage or ‘letter’ grades using a course scheme.

Note: The course schemes themselves are copied over.

3. Grade items displayed in “Grades List:” All grade items or a subset.
4. Display Options

Please contact the LTC if you have any questions.

The campus is actively migratiing to Office 2007 during the Spring semester. This may have some significant impact as you build or revise course content in your D2L course, or when you exchange documents with students. Please note the following:

(1) All campus classrooms and computer labs have Office 2007 as the default Office application. When you open a Word 2003 or PPT 2003 document in the classroom, Office 2007 will open. This should not affect your document, but the look and feel will be different if you have not migrated.

(2) If you have not migrated to Office 2007, you are strongly encouraged to do so soon during the spring semester. You can find information regarding the migration at http://www.uww.edu/icit/projects/microsoft/office07/officefaq.html#0. Contact the Helpdesk if you need further assistance.

(3) If you have migrated to Office 2007 and are distributing documents to your students in this new version, you need to keep in mind that some students may not have this new version on their computer and may not be able to read your documents. You may ask your students to use the campus computer labs, or you may choose to save your documents in Office 2003 format as well, or you can ask your students to download the compatibility package available on the official Microsoft site to be able to read your documents.

(4) If you are a Mac user, Office 2004 for the Mac has compatibility issues with Office 2007. Fortunately, Office 2008 for the MAC is now being released and will be available to campus users soon. This version will be compatible with Office 2007. In the meantime, you should ask your students who send you office 2007 documents to save them in Office 2003 and resend. A third party program is available but is not free. Contact the Helpdesk (X4357) if such option is appealing to you in the duration.

Have I confused you totally? Please do not hesitate to contact D2L-support or the Helpdesk if the above information does not help with your situation.

D2L-support

Even when News Items are no longer viewable by your students, they do not expire. Acquiring too many can slow down course copies and can make it hard to find items you wish to make current. There are several ways you can clean out your News items list.

1. Don’t Copy News
When copying course components, you can click the checkbox next to ‘News’ to simply avoid copying the news entirely to your new course.

2. Delete more than one news item at a time
In your course, click the ‘Search’ button in the ‘News’ area. You can then click the trashcan icon next to news items to delete them individually, or you can click news items’ checkboxes and click the delete icon at the top of the list.

As the semester is drawing to a close, and many courses will be conducting final tests in D2L, here are a few best practices that may help your quiz to run smoothly: