Tag Archives: forinstructors

Canvas Transition Update

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Thank you for your hard work transferring your Desire2Learn courses to Canvas! Starting with the Summer 2019, 100% of our for-credit courses are on Canvas!

While the end of this giant undertaking is in sight, there are still some important things to keep in mind as we close out the Desire2Learn service:

  • Desire2Learn Courses will be set to Read-Only on January 17th, 2020. Are you still using Desire2Learn for a department or ongoing course? If so – now is the time to get your course migrated over to Canvas! Request your Canvas ongoing course using this form.
  • Desire2Learn Student Activity exports now available! We have an export report available that allows us to export student activity for: Checklists, Content, Course Files, Discussions, Dropbox, Grades, Group contribution/locker, Homepages, News, Quizzes and Release Conditions. Fill out this form to request a student activity export. Please allow 7 business days for processing. Requests must be received by March 1st, 2020.
  • UW-System will be removing access to Desire2Learn in June of 2020. All information you would like to keep must be exported out of D2L before June of 2020. Whether it’s an old for-credit based course, or an ongoing course – make sure all material is backed up. Once our access is removed, we will not have any way to obtain this data. Don’t delay, save your course files today!
  • View the Desire2Learn Retirement timeline for additional details.

Tell us about your Canvas support experience. Overall, we have had great success with Canvas 24/7/365 Phone/Chat/Email support. Whether you got an awesome answer from Canvas Support, or if you were wishing they would have provided more information – let us know! We review all support interactions on a regular basis – and we want to make sure you get the support and answers you need! Submit your feedback by going to http://uww.edu/icit/services/canvas and clicking on the Vendor Support Feedback button.

If you have any questions or concerns about the transition, please reach out to the UW-W Learning Technology Center.

New “Competitions” Feature Available in Poll Everywhere

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Looking for some competition? This month Poll Everywhere released a new “Competitions” feature that allows you to create questions for a trivia-like activity.

Students can compete live in class to earn points based on getting correct answers, as well as how quickly they answer. The feature includes a Leaderboard that updates with each round.

If you are interested in learning more about the “Competitions” feature in Poll Everywhere, Poll Everywhere has released a
short Webinar that introduces and explains the feature. 

If you need any help setting up Poll Everywhere, please feel free to contact the Learning Technology Center. 

Copying and Cleaning Content into your New Course

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Now that Winter 2018 and Spring 2018 course requests are available, you are likely looking to populate your new courses with materials you have already created and compiled. 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 relevant content from one D2L course offering to another.

For written instructions to help copy, please visit the D2L Copy Components documentation we have available. Alternately, you can also watch a video walkthrough of the process.

After copying materials into your new course, you may be interested in cleaning up some unnecessary things.  Some areas have a habit of bulking up over time, and we recommend checking them for unused items.

  1. Content, Dropbox, Grades, and Discussions areas are things you probably clean up every semester.
  2. The Groups tool will transfer over course sections from previous semesters.  Clean out Groups from previous years to make your relevant Groups easier to find.
  3. News items often include specific dates, time sensitive information, or mention of Content items that may or may not be around anymore.  Keep the ones that are still relevant, but delete the expired ones that you don’t intend on reworking each semester.
  4. In the Quizzes area, the Question Library is a great resource to house questions you think you might use again in the future. It is also a chronic hiding place of questions instructors deemed unsuitable for use in their classes.
  5. It is not uncommon for Instructors to build Surveys for a specific purpose, and only use them one semester.
  6. The Manage Files area houses everything you have ever uploaded to content.  If there are old documents, PDFs, PowerPoints that you don’t need you can remove them by going through the Manage Files area.

If you have any questions regarding the copy components tool or would like assistance cleaning up your course, please contact UW-W D2L Support.