Category Archives: Announcements & News

Announcements and news on technologies

Upcoming D2L Course Cleanup

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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.

Summer 2013 D2L Course Requests Open

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Summer 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.

Desire2Learn Service Update (January 2013)

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On Thursday, January 31st, Desire2Learn Inc. deployed the two latest Service Packs to our D2L learning environment. Unfortunately, along with the deploying the Service Packs, Learn@UW has reported a new issue that affects copying grade items. Instructors cannot copy gradebook items and/or categories from any previous offering of the course using Copy Components. Currently, the workaround is to use Export and Import Components functions instead. Learn@UW is pushing for a fix to have the Copy functionality restored for Gradebook items. However, these Service Packs included several fixes to existing issues with two prominent issues being resolved:

  • ePortfolio: Users no longer encounter an error when they push a presentation to a course. Presentations can be successfully pushed to a course without having to create a Sharing Group.
  • Minibar: Users can now receive and access alerts. Minibar alerts should no longer be blocked by unsubmitted quizzes after a quiz is no longer accessible to a user.

In addition to those fixes, there are several others in various tools as follows:

  • Calendar: Due dates displayed in Calendar for Checklist items no longer display as UTC time. The time now correctly converts and displays in the user’s time zone. Offsetting dates in Calendar now calculates times correctly when the offset spans a daylight savings time shift.The Calendar widget and the Upcoming view in Calendar now only show events for the current day if they are still occurring. Previously, current-day events that ended were still displayed.
  • Classlist: Online status in Classlist now displays correctly across different time zones.
  • Competencies: After copying a Learning Objective with a Manual Rubric activity without receiving errors.
  • Content: Content user progress was not updating when viewing sequenced SCORM 2004 packages. Visits to these topics are now correctly tracked.
  • Dropbox: The notification now correctly displays the number of submissions to the assignment folder in Dropbox. Word wrap is now working correctly for Feedback in Dropbox.
  • ePortfolio: News feed load time is now improved, users with a large amount of shared activities will notice a faster load time.
  • Grades: In a student view, when users click on the calculator icon for a calculated grade item, they can view the results of what grade items were included. They will no longer encounter an error.
  • Homepages: Shared widgets now properly display on new homepages that have been copied via Copy Course Components.
  • HTML Editor: If a custom widget contains a <form> tag it will now be wrapped in an iFrame. This prevents the <form> from getting stripped out of the custom widget.
  • Minibar: When a user has visited 50 courses or more, the course selector now correctly displays the order of the results when sorted by last accessed course.
  • Quizzes/Question Library: If a random section is deleted from a quiz, it will allow users to successfully import questions from that random section back into the quiz. The Quiz Attempt Log now records any changes, saves, and submissions made by the user. Users can now access the Edit and Preview actions from the context menu of a question within a random folder without receiving an error.

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

Clicker Reminders for the Upcoming Semester

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If you plan to use student response system (aka “clickers”) technology in your summer course, please contact the LTC to register. Classes using clickers must be added to the Clicker Registration application so that your students can register their clickers and you can retrieve a class participant list for use in TurningPoint.

If you have courses you would like added to the Clicker Registration application, please provide the LTC with your course name and number. If you have multiple sections, please also specify if you prefer to have your course sections combined or separate.

UW-Whitewater also offers ResponseWare, an “app” that allows students to use their smartphones, laptops, and other Internet-connected devices rather than a clicker keypad. The reduced cost for students to use an app versus purchasing a clicker keypad can be significant. If you are interested in using ResponseWare in addition to using clickers, but you do not yet have a ResponseWare account, please contact the LTC for setup.

Respondus 4.0

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Respondus is a convenient tool for professors to create and manage exams that can be printed to paper or published directly to Desire2Learn. Whether you are familiar with online testing or relatively new to it, Respondus will save you hours on each project! With Respondus you can:

  • Create exams and assessments offline using a Windows computer.
  • Insert mathematical and scientific symbols using the Respondus Equation Editor.
  • Import and Export question from Desire2Learn.
  • Respondus Testbank Network offers thousands of publisher testbanks that instructors can use for free.

For more information on how to install Respondus to your computer, please visit the Respondus wiki instructional page.

If you any have question or concerns please contact the Learning Technology Center (LTC) for more information via email OR visit us at McGraw Hall Suite 120.

“The Flipped Classroom” – Call for Proposals and Save the Date

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While not an entirely a new concept, there has been increased interest in what’s called the “Flipped Classroom.”  Typically, “flipping” is considered to be the practice of using video segments to disseminate content-rich lessons outside of the classroom, thereby allowing classroom time to be used for interaction and hands-on activities.  However, the flipped classroom model can take many forms and may also involve a wide variety of technologies and methodologies.  Join your UW-Whitewater colleagues as we consider what it means (and does not mean) to “flip” a classroom and discuss the potential benefits and pitfalls of this practice.  Particular emphasis will be on exploring methods for using “flipping” techniques to enhance student learning and engagement.

If you have used “flipping” techniques in your own teaching, please share your experiences and ideas with your colleagues – even if you have just experimented! We welcome presentation proposals that include best practices (based upon successes or failures), lesson samples, demonstrations, techniques, lesson evaluations, and/or Scholarship of Teaching and Learning research results.

This event is sponsored by the Learning Technology Center (LTC), the LEARN Center, and the College of Education and Professional Studies.  Lunch and refreshments will be provided.

If you are interested in registering for this workshop as a presenter, please contact Renee Pfeifer-Luckett, Director, Learning Technology Center to discuss your proposal topic (pfeiferr@uww.edu).  Full details on the Call For Proposals can be accessed from the following link: http://geturl.uww.edu/1i3

Desire2Learn Service Update (November 2012)

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While we were all enjoying the Thanksgiving vacation, Desire2Learn (D2L) was hard at work deploying Service Pack 5 (SP5).  This update brings some important bug fixes to our D2L system!

Most importantly, some of the annoying bugs users were experiencing with dropbox submissions running through TurnItIn. All dropbox submissions since January 2012 will be reviewed and automatically processed if they are still in queue for TurnItIn.

In addition, some other important changes to note are:

  • Gradebook: Logging now tracks who creates, deletes, and restores grade items.  Instructors can restore, review and recover all deleted items and student grades from the Event Log, accessible through “Manage Grades.”  Also, a confirmation dialog box now displayed when a user clicks “Clear” from the Grade Item page to avoid accidental clearing and saving of grades.
  • TurnItIn Submissions: Two bugs that have prevented some Dropbox submissions from processing through TurnItIn appear to be fixed in SP5. Some submissions not processing because of a third error are still being investigated by Desire2Learn support.

Winterim Instructors:  D2L is scheduled to be unavailable on the first day of Winterim classes beginning at 9:30pm on Wednesday, January 2nd 2013 until 10:30am on Thursday, January 3rd 2013 for file server storage migration.  Please plan your work accordingly.  There will be more information and a formal campus announcement are in the works for the coming weeks.

Course Request Application:  We have overhauled the course request application and a number of new features are available.  For more information see: D2L Course Request Enhancements Now Available.

Winterim & Spring 2013 course requests are now available.  To request for your courses, go to: D2L Course Request Application.

Streaming Video Updates:  We have updated the underlying code that powers the streaming videos produced by the Learning Technology Center to now support playback on iOS devices.  For more information see: Streaming Video Support for iOS.

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

Spring 2013 Course Requests Open

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Winterim 2013 and Spring 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.

Also, as per some of our previous announcements, the D2L course request application has been updated to make the process much more streamlined. For more information on these changes, please see our related blog post.

D2L Course Request Enhancements Now Available

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The LTC has overhauled the D2L Course Request Application and the new version is now available!  There are a number of changes and enhancements in the new release:

    • New title format for courses! Courses by default will now be named using the following convention: Introduction to Programming (Spring 2013)
      Instructors can also rename their course in D2L if desired
    • We reduced the number of screens and clicks needed to request a course
    • The application now directly pulls cross listed and combined sections from WINS, to eliminate confusion
    • The site design is optimized for mobile devices, allowing you to request your courses when you’re “on the go”
    • Authentication upgraded to use Single Sign On (Shibboleth).  Remember, to logout of the application you will need to close your web browser.

The application can be accessed from the “Instructors” page on the D2L login page, from the “Quick Tools” listed on the sidebar in D2L, or by the direct link D2L Course Request.

We have also created a short video that will walk you through a WINS timetable course request, and explain some of the new features.

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

D2L Course Request Outage – Upcoming Changes

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The D2L course request application will be unavailable between 6am and 7am on Thursday, November 8th while we deploy the new version of the application.  We will open course requests for the Spring 2013 semester starting Monday, November 12th.

A few of the key changes in the process are:

    • New title format for courses! Courses by default will now be named using the following convention: Introduction to Programming (Spring 2013)
      Instructors can also rename their course in D2L if desired
    • We reduced the number of screens and clicks needed to request a course
    • The application now directly pulls cross listed and combined sections from WINS, to eliminate confusion
    • The site design is optimized for mobile devices, allowing you to request your courses when you’re “on the go”
    • Authentication upgraded to use Single Sign On (Shibboleth)

We are excited about these changes and we hope that this makes your course request process easier.  If you have any questions or concerns regarding this, please contact UW-W D2L Support.