This morning, Tuesday, August 20th, Desire2Learn Inc. deployed Service Pack 12 and 13 to our D2L learning environment.

Two of the biggest changes made to the Learning Environment with these service packs include a course search function in the Copy Components tool and better functionality with the document viewer within the Dropbox tool. In addition to the updates, the Notifications feature has been re-enabled for users. Further information will be provided for Notifications and the Copy Components changes in future blog posts, but updated instructions on how to copy using the Copy Components tool are available on the Copy Components wiki page.

Some of the issues addressed in the document viewer withing the Dropbox tool are as follows:

• Presentation (.pptx) files edited within Google Docs were not viewable.
• Some documents had images cut off.
• Chinese characters did not display correctly.
• MS Word documents with many pages failed to convert.
• Document viewer did not display graphs.
• Some MS Word 2013 documents were not viewable.
• Some right-to-left MS Word documents did not convert properly.

Additional fixes to tools in these service packs are as follows:

Dropbox: Dropbox submission files now display in correct order after sorting files alphabetically by users’ first name and last name.

Discussions

• Editing a pinned Discussion post no longer unpins the post.
• Instructors can now receive notifications for discussion topics that have release condition associations.

Grades

• Formula grade items now calculate correctly when using “If” conditions with floating point numbers.
• Updating dropbox submission feedback for a grade item now correctly updates the feedback text in Grades and in the User Progress Grades Progress report

Competencies

• To address slower page loads when the competency tree is very large and complex, and has many root nodes, an alternative option is now provided to default to a search view, rather than the tree view.
• An error no longer occurs when deleting a grade item associated with an activity that in turn, is associated with a learning objective.
• A performance improvement was made to prevent timeouts from occurring during competency evaluation of learning objectives associated to quizzes.

HTML Editor

• Tables in News items now display their grid lines correctly. Additionally, setting the cell padding for the table also displays correctly. Note, that the display of table rows and padding might appear different when viewing them on older pages versus newer pages.
• Text in a table now aligns in published content the same way it appears in a preview when using the HTML Editor.

Homepages: Gradients for widget titles now displays in Internet Explorer. Gradients for homepage backgrounds are no longer displayed in Internet Explorer 8 and 9 due to limited browser support for gradients and background opacity.

Web Framework: On full screen pages, the background color now covers the full width of the main screen.

If you have any questions or concerns about this service pack and the tools updates, please contact UW-W D2L Support.

Some users may have received several email notifications from D2L that were related to past courses. Learn@UW has inadvertently triggered notification emails this morning for non-UWM campuses.

Learn@UW is currently taking steps to stop the flood of old messages and to determine the cause of this event. The emails can be ignored and shouldn’t affect your courses. However, we apologize that some of you may be receiving many of these emails, especially if you had notification subscriptions set up in your past courses.

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

This morning, Thursday, June 27th, Desire2Learn Inc. deployed Service Pack 11 to our D2L learning environment.

Included fixes to tools in this service pack are as follows:

Quizzes: If a quiz’s Submission View is restricted to only be viewed by users who achieve a score between 0-100%, users who achieve 100% can now also access the Submission View correctly.

Calendar: Application changes were made to improve the performance of the Calendar tool.

Grades: If students have names that contain apostrophes (‘), it is now possible to correctly access their quiz attempts and dropbox folder submissions from grade book in Grades.

Discussions: New topics are no longer created in the wrong forum when users create group-restricted discussion topics from “Group Restrictions” in Discussions.

Dropbox: A performance improvement was made to reduce database I/O consumption when generating Notifications for “Dropbox – dropbox folder due date or end date is 2 days away” and “Quizzes – quiz end date is 2 days away”.

Content Browser: Titles and icons in the Content Browser widget are now restored to their original layout and no longer have alignment issues.

If you have any questions or concerns about this service pack and the tools updates, please contact UW-W D2L Support.

This morning, Thursday, May 30th, Desire2Learn Inc. deployed Service Pack 10 to our D2L learning environment.

Included fixes to tools in this service pack are as follows:

Dropbox:

• In a group dropbox folder, each now completes successfully without error when searching to view submissions by “Submitted groups” and selecting the check box “Only show users with unread submissions”.
• When viewing a dropbox folder submission in the native document viewer or as a download, the submission is now always marked as “Read”.
• When Turnitin’s OriginalityCheck is enabled for a dropbox folder’s submissions, and comments with or without numeric scores are entered via Turnitin’s GradeMark, a Markup icon now appears to the submitter, linking to the commented section.
• A usability improvement was made to the “Retract published feedback” option for dropbox folder submissions: A retracted evaluation now reverts to Draft status, and the grade book will display a cleared score and feedback.
• Links to Originality Reports for dropbox folder submissions now remain correct and no longer break.

Quizzes/Question Library:

• Exporting quiz results via CSV format no longer causes an error if the quiz contains a section with Display Option “Display message and image” enabled that contains an empty message.
• Usability improved for Matching questions: Students can now respond by selecting from a drop-down list of answer options instead of manually typing entries into text fields.
• When grading from a quiz’s Questions tab, grade changes are now accurately updated and reflected in the grade book.

Content:

• The User Progress Content report on the number of visits (# Visits), and the number of visits recorded in the Content tool are now counted the same way regardless of the time spent visiting each Content topic
• Viewing SCORM reports with an entry that has a total time spent over 999 minutes no longer causes an error.

News: News items’ attachments now properly display in the News widget after they are copied to a course via Import/Export/Copy Components.

Surveys: A performance improvement has been made to the page loading time when creating new Surveys. Timeout errors no longer occur.

Assignment Grader: A bug has been corrected that now allows posting a rubric-based evaluation for Dropbox submissions.

Calendar: Several performance improvements have been made to the Calendar tool, especially when it deals with a large number of events.

Import Course Components: Importing matching questions from a Blackboard 9.1 package now correctly imports the answers as well. Previously, imported matches did not have the correct match values; instead, all matches had the first answer item set as the correct choice.

Equation Editor: The “\\” symbol now inserts a new line in the LaTeX format in the Equation Editor.

HTML Editor:

• In Discussions and Homepage tools, text in HTML Editor no longer overlaps regardless of font size.
• In Firefox and Internet Explorer, long, unbroken strings of text entered into HTML Editor now wrap correctly once they reach the edge of the editor container.
• iPad users can now use the full functionality of HTML Editor.
• Users can now safely copy existing News items and paste them into new News items without errors.
• Images inserted using the HTML Editor can now have up to 200 characters in alternative text.

Minibar: The Search for a Course selector now searches for all keywords entered into the text field. Search no longer seeks an exact match for the search phrase.

File Management: In Manage Files, file and folder context menus now open in the correct position for both Left-to-Right and Right-to-Left user interface modes.

If you have any questions or concerns about this service pack and the tools updates, please contact UW-W D2L Support.

This morning, Thursday, April 25th, Desire2Learn Inc. deployed Service Pack 9 to our D2L learning environment.

Along with some tool fixes (as outlined below), D2L has made a much-requested change to the interface. The course navigation bar no longer disappears when users are viewing full-screen pages, such as the “Enter Grades” tool. Issues with downloading files in the Dropbox and Content tools’ file attachments through Internet Explorer 8 have also been resolved.

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

• Discussions:
  1. On the Group Restrictions page for a discussion topic, returned results now work properly when you select All Forums in the Forum drop-down list when previously no results were returned.
  2. After users perform a Role Switch and then access Discussions, they can now perform actions only allowed by the switched role permissions, and no longer possess the original role permissions.
• Grades:
  1. Lengthy grade category descriptions now wrap correctly; this eliminates the need for horizontal scrolling.
  2. Formulas for Calculated Final Grade and Adjusted Final Grade now copy correctly when Grades are copied in Copy Course Components.
  3. In Grades’ Enter Grades page, each grade item’s Properties information no longer displays “Weight” properties if the grading system is not a Weighted system.
• Dropbox:
  1. The Dropbox Folders page and Folder Submissions page now correctly indicate the number of submissions that are “Unread” and “read” after file submissions are viewed online or downloaded.
  2. In Dropbox folders with Turnitin OriginalityCheck enabled, an error no longer occurs when a GradeMark Available to Students date is set in the past. This error occurred most frequently in OrginialityCheck-enabled Dropbox folders that were copied from another org unit.
• Chat: Previously, chat messages had a maximum limit of 400 characters. This limit has been removed.
• Content:
  1. The Content Browser widget did not update release conditions when conditions were met. Release conditions are now computed when the widget loads so students can see content that becomes available.
  2. Inserting a quicklink no longer updates the topic title if it is not empty.
• User Progress: User visits to Content topics and modules and navigation through them with the Next or Previous buttons are now correctly tracked.
• HTML Editor: Image resizing is now supported in Firefox for both instances.
• Homepages: Duplicated instances of a custom widget can now be styled independently without affecting all instance of that widget.

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

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.

In order to maintain optimal storage capacity, and ensure the ongoing smooth operation of D2L, the UW System conducts an annual purge of older courses from the system. This year, we are beginning preparation for courses from Fall 2008 through Summer 2010. Courses that are in this time frame will be purged from the D2L system beginning on May 3, 2013.

Things to keep in mind for the Cleanup process:

• Only courses from Fall 2008 through Summer 2010 will be affected by this year’s Cleanup. Any courses that don’t fall in that time frame, including courses that are “OTHER” or “ONGOING” designated, are not affected.
• Course materials or student information in courses can be exported if they’re needed for future courses or analysis. If you need assistance with exporting these items, please review the “How To” section of the D2L Cleanup Resources website.
• Course components and materials can also be copied to an “OTHER” or “ONGOING” course shell if you plan on using the same materials for future courses. To complete a request for one, use the “Special Course Request” section of the D2L Course Request application.
• If a special circumstance exists where a course that is slated for cleanup needs to be maintained as is (this is usually for reasons other than retaining course materials or student information), please complete and submit the Course Cleanup Retention form before April 26, 2013.

If you have any questions about the D2L Course Cleanup process, please review the Frequently Asked Questions section of the D2L Cleanup Resources site as your question may already be addressed there. If you still have questions or need assistance, please contact UW-W D2L Support.