“Save the Date” and Call for Proposals!

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Please save the date for the first ever Desire2Learn Wisconsin Regional User Forum to be held Friday, November 8, 2013, from 9:00 am to 4:30 pm at the Sheraton in Madison, WI.

Join with other D2L users from across the state for a day of collaboration and discussion on how eLearning is being used in Wisconsin to enhance teaching and learning.  The day will include D2L led training sessions and discussions, as well as presentations by instructors on their tips, tricks, strategies. and best practices.

Visit the Desire2Learn Ignite website to “Save the Date” and to submit your proposal to present at the conference.  Presentation proposals are due Friday, September 6, 2013 http://geturl.uww.edu/1ma

UWM Digital Futures Unconference – June 21

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Join UWM’s Learning Technology Center for the Second Annual Digital Future Unconference that will be focusing on emerging technologies and identifying pedagogically effective ways digital technologies can be used across campus to enable active learning opportunities and improve the student experience.This event includes keynote speaker George Siemens, Associate Director, Technology Enhanced Knowledge Research Institute, Athabasca University.

The Unconference will be held on Friday, June 21, 2013 from 10AM – 4:30PM, at the Hefter Conference Center.

Make sure to register for this event! Check out http://Unconference.UWM.edu for more information and watch testimonials from last years participants. If you have any questions regarding the unconference, please contact the UWM Learning Technology Center at LTC@uwm.edu

Copying Content into your New Course

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The Copy Components feature in D2L allows instructors to replicate the course components from one course offering to another. These include all commonly used components such as — news, content, files, gradebook structure, quizzes/question library, discussion group structure, and more. You can use this tool to easily re-use the same content from one D2L course offering to another.

  1. In your new D2L course homepage, click “Edit Course” on the navigation bar
  2. Under the heading Site Resources, click on “Import/Export/Copy Components“
  3. Next, click on “Copy Components” then click on “Start“
  4. Under the Existing Offering drop down menu, find the course that you would like to copy components from. Then click on “Continue“
  5. If you want to copy all of the components check mark “Select All Components” at the top of the list.
    If you only want to copy individual items check mark the category heading and click on “Select individual items to copy“.  It is important to remember that when you copy over the content, you MUST also copy over the course files.  If you only copy the content and not the course files you may receive errors when loading the content in the new course.
  6. When all the items and course files have been selected, click on “Continue“
  7. Confirm the components that you would like to copy over by clicking on “Finish“
  8. After you received all green check marks, click on “Done“

We also have a video tutorial that will take you through how to copy components, or you can also visit our Instructional Wiki page for additional information.

If you have any questions regarding the copy components tool, please contact UW-W D2L Support.

 

Desire2Learn Service Update (5/30)

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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.

D2L eGrading Process Now Open

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The D2L eGrading process allows instructors to transfer final grades from their D2L Gradebook to their WINS Grade Roster in a few simple steps. This process is currently open and available for instructors to transfer their semester grades from D2L to WINS.

For more information on how to use this process, please see the following Instructional Resources wiki pages:

We also have a video available to guide you through the first 2 steps:

If you need additional assistance with your Gradebook or if you have eGrading questions, please contact UW-W D2L Support.

eTextbooks Available for D2L

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Are your students currently purchasing books or supplemental materials for your course?  If so, you may want to check out our eTextbook partner, CourseSmart.  At this time textbooks located in campus textbook rental are not eligible for this service.

CourseSmart is the largest provider of eTextbooks and digital course materials.  eTextbooks are discounted up to 60% off the purchase price of the print versions. It allows for anytime, anywhere online or offline access to digital course materials for students and faculty. With eTextbooks, faculty have the ability to apply notes, highlight important text areas, add annotations, as well as assign notes to highlighted text to any books that are added to the digital bookshelf. D2L@UWW is currently setup to offer direct integration to eTextbooks with CourseSmart.

If you are interested in using CourseSmart eTextbooks for your Summer or Fall 2013 course, please Contact D2L Support.

Using the “Burn” Application with iMovie

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Apple no longer supports iDVD and will no longer include this software package as a part of their suite.  Since iDVD is no longer being supported, we have come up with a 3rd party freeware solution with an application called Burn.  To download and learn how to use this application in place of iDVD please see: Using Burn with iMovie.

If you have any questions about this, please contact UW-W Learning Technology Center.

D2L ePortfolio Service Available for Graduating Students

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myDesire2Learn is a free tool offered and hosted by Desire2Learn Inc. that uses the same framework as the ePortfolio tool in D2L. It allows for users who are graduating and/or leaving the university to continue using their ePortfolios. Because they will no longer have access to UW-Whitewater’s D2L system, myDesire2Learn allows those users to continue to update and share their ePortfolios that they’ve developed during their college career.

To access this service, users will need to click the “Export to myDesire2Learn” button in either the Instructor or Student Resources widget after logging into D2L. This will have more information on myDesire2Learn and links to start the process.

If you have students that are graduating this semester, feel free to pass this information along to them. If you have any questions about ePortfolio or the myDesire2Learn service, please contact UW-W D2L Support.