Did you know? – D2L Mobile

Posted on April 17, 2013 by Erica Mendez

If you have a smartphone or tablet you can learn on the go and interact with your courses wherever and whenever you’d like! Desire2Learn (D2L) mobile supports multiple tools like content, grades, discussions, drop box, and many others.

In order to access the mobile version, grab your smartphone or tablet and navigate to the D2L login page. D2L will detect that you are using a mobile device and will display a mobile friendly version of your course material.

If you have any questions or concerns, please Contact D2L Support.

Fall 2013 D2L Course Requests Now Open

Posted on April 8, 2013 by Susan Degen

Fall 2013 D2L course requests are now available in the D2L Course Request application.

As a reminder, course requests for a semester become available on the first day of priority registration for students, and course shells for D2L need to be requested for every semester you plan on using D2L.

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact UW-W D2L Support.

Do MOOCs really work?

Posted on April 5, 2013 by Erica Mendez

Does teaching 10,000 students or more online really work? There has been a lot of hype about the effectiveness of massive open online classes (also know as “MOOCs”). The Chronicle of Higher Education conducted the largest survey of professors who have taught MOOCs and shows that the process is time-consuming but, according to the instructors, often successful!

Check out the full article “The Minds Behind the MOOCs” by Steven Kolowich that contains the survey results.

Instructional Technology Showcase – April 12!

Posted on April 5, 2013 by Erica Mendez

UW-Extension, UW-Milwaukee, UW-Whitewater, UW-Colleges and UW-Parkside are pleased to announce the UW System Virtual Showcase 2013, sponsored by the LTDC. This webinar-style event will be held on Friday, April 12th from 8:45 am to 2:15 pm. Keynote speakers, Patricia McGee and Scott Hamm will discuss active and mobile learning. UW-Whitewater Faculty member Jeannine Rowe will share her ResponseWare Best Practices and John Reilly will provide his insight on “Flipping the Classroom.”

Session details, registration, and information on how to connect are available at: http://blogs.ces.uwex.edu/showcase

Desire2Learn Service Update (4/4/2013)

Posted on April 4, 2013 by Susan Degen

This morning, Thursday, April 4th, Desire2Learn Inc. deployed Service Pack 8 and a few hotfixes to our D2L learning environment.

A bug that made instructors unable to copy gradebook items and/or categories from any previous offering of the course using the Copy Components tool has been fixed. Also, a fix has been applied that corrects an issue with the “New Survey” function not working in some courses under the Surveys tool. Issues with downloading files through Internet Explorer 8 are now resolved. News and other tools’ file attachments are now downloadable from IE8.

In addition, these are some tool specific fixes from the Service Pack:

ePortfolio: Invitation messages that are longer than 150 characters when entered, but are less than 150 characters after formatting, no longer results in an error when viewed.
Grades: When copying a course with an attached grade scheme using the Import / Export / Copy Course Components tool, the default grade scheme selection is now retained. Several database performance issues were corrected to improve or reduce load issues.
Dropbox: If a dropbox folder has a date availability restrictions, its folder instructions no longer appear in the calendar to users without proper permissions until the available start date. Also, when users evaluate the last dropbox folder submissions on the Evaluate Submission page, the “Finish” button is now replaced with a “Done” button and no longer publishes the last submission listed. “Done” instead redirects back to the Folder Submissions page.
Widgets: The links widget did not allow users to add links within it even if users have proper permissions. This has been corrected.

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact UW-W D2L Support.

Desire2Learn Maintenance Window (4/4)

Posted on April 3, 2013 by Susan Degen

On the scheduled, weekly maintenance window this Thursday, April 4th, Learn@UW will be deploying Service Pack 8 and some hotfixes to our D2L instance. However, because of the amount of work scheduled, this window is extended and will start at 4:00 AM rather than the usual 5:00 AM start time. The maintenance is still expected to end at 7:00 AM.

During this window from 4:00 AM to 7:00 AM, users may experience performance issues. If you are using D2L during this time frame, please plan your work accordingly.

If you have any questions, please contact UW-W D2L Support.

[RESOLVED] D2L Login Issues

Posted on April 2, 2013 by Aaron Axelsen

Update: As of 11:30 PM on April 2nd, 2013 the issue appears to be resolved. If you are still having issues logging into D2L, please contact D2L Support.

Beginning at 10:15 PM on April 2nd, 2013 users are currently experiencing issues logging into D2L. This has been reported to Learn@UW, and their technicians are looking into the issue.

We will update this news item with any new information as we receive it.

TurningPoint Hyperlinks Workaround (Clickers)

Posted on March 27, 2013 by Erica Mendez

In Office 2007 and Office 2010, there is a known issue with hyperlinks in PowerPoint. Any time a hyperlink to an outside program is used in a presentation as a certain type of custom animation, this will cause PowerPoint to crash. Since TurningPoint uses these types of animations as their base for functionality, this issue is common among its users. While Turning Technologies is actively investigating this issue at this time, there are some useful and easy workarounds available.

Please view the TurningPoint Hyperlink Workaround PDF for more details about the hyperlink workarounds.

If you have any other questions or concerns, please Contact D2L Support.

Utilizing D2L Groups for Class Projects

Posted on March 19, 2013 by Erica Mendez

Are you thinking about setting up groups for your class this semester, but you’re not sure how it works? Check out this new, short video that explains how you can utilize groups in D2L to create group dropboxes, discussion forums, and lockers for your class projects.

If you would like to start using the groups tool in D2L, visit our Instructional Wiki pages on:

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact UW-W D2L Support.

D2L Quiz Tips

Posted on March 15, 2013 by Erica Mendez

We have a few tips and tricks for you to keep in mind the next time you take a quiz in D2L. The items below will help you avoid the most commonly reported issues with quizzes.

You should always “Save” a response after you have answered a question.
If you close out your browser while taking your quiz the timer will not stop.
Know when the quiz ends and how much time you have to take the quiz so that you can plan accordingly.
Be aware of how many attempts you have to take a quiz.
Before you submit your quiz, click on the “Save all Responses” to make sure that all of your answers have been saved.

If you have any questions please, Contact D2L Support.