Desire2Learn (D2L) Overview 1 hour session The purpose of this one hour training session is to provide an overview of the D2L environment and the very basics of teaching with it. This is not an in depth how to training. Outline A. Logging in B. Your courses/d2l Home page C. Course Home Page D. General Navigation E. Setting up your profile and preferences F. News (Announcement) tool G. Email H. Discussion tool I. Dropbox J. Grade book K. Classlist L. Role switch (student view) M. Edit Course N. Manage files O. Quizzes P. Group tool Q. Chat R. Calendar NOTES: There will be an online training module inside of D2L that you will have access to. You can move through the module at your own pace and learn more about how to use the D2L tools and features. A. Logging in https://online.regis.edu/ Use your regular Regis login and password. Please note that eventually the URL will change to our worldclass. regis.edu address and once we have fully migrated to D2L we will still refer to the online course environment as WORLDCLASS. B. D2L Home Page Highlights of the D2L My Home page include Last 10 courses you accessed Search for a course Updates (number of unread discussion, email, dropbox etc) College announcements (news) Set your preferences and profile Calendar widget News (announcement tool) D2L online HELP (upper right on nav bar); Logout button; (demo) How to Enter a course Page 1
C. Course Home Page The course home page is the first area both you and the students will see upon entering the course. My settings Events News (announcements) (demo) expand collapse a widget D. General Navigation Nav bar overview (upper left) My Home; email; calendar (upper right) D2L HELP, Logout (Lower nav bar): course home, content, discussions, chat, dropbox, quizzes, grades Classlist, groups, edit course, wizard CONTENT View content Manage content o Reports o Bookmarks Print/download E. Setting your preferences From either your course home page or My Home find your preferences link on the left. Tabs: general prefs/appearance/ Language/ discussions/ email/ pager Use the {?} next to item for description Discussions: you can set up the notifications to be sent to you via email if you wish. Email: you can set up the D2L email to forward notification to you to a Regis email account. A note about the pager Similar to an instant message system, if a student, for example, notices that you are currently in the course and online they can send you a page (message). Perhaps to send you a quick question. However, when you are not online it will hold the message in the pager inbox. When you log in the pager will look different (upper right corner) and may sound an alarm when you log in as well. (you can turn on/off this alarm and you may choose to set your presence as always offline via your preferences). Setting up your profile Your profile only needs to be set up one time and it will follow you from term to term. You may add a photo to your profile (recommended if you teach online). Only provide the information that you are comfortable with in sharing. You can view other people s profiles via the classlist and discussions. Students will see your provide from there as well. F. News (Announcement) tool On the course home page locate the News tool. Here you can create announcements and messages for the whole class. Students will see the news announcements on the course home page after they login to the course. Your announcements will remain in the course and stack up with the newest one always on Page 2
top. They will not be removed unless you set it to be. You will have the ability to delay the start date of the message as well. You may easily add pictures, links or attachments to a post. (Something NEW) Add Audio to your news announcement You will notice that while composing your announcement message you can add a recorded audio message. While this is a wonderful tool to incorporate, please be mindful of accessibility. The audio function is flash based therefore cannot be recorded while using an ipad or iphone. The time limit is one minute to record. G. Email tool The email tool is located on the top left area of the nav bar. Note however, you can also send email from other D2L tools such as the discussion, grade book, classlist and dropbox tools. Select individual students you wish to email, select all, or select special groups of students (for example, in the dropbox, anyone who has not submitted their assignment yet.) An important note about the D2L email tool: Similar to ANGEL, it is a tool that functions within the LMS environment. You can only send email from within the D2L email tool. You can NOT receive email from any other source. So anytime a message needs to be composed by you or a student it would have to be from within the email tool in D2L. You can forward a copy of your incoming messages to your external email if you wish to. One characteristic about the email tool that is DIFFERENT from ANGEL is the fact that all of your D2L email will sit together on one level as opposed to being separated by course. In other words, if you teach multiple courses all of those emails will be together in one inbox. Perhaps you may want to ask that students to put the course number in the subject line of the email they are sending. However, there is a feature in the email that will allow you to filter the display of your messages by course offering. Email Settings: Your email settings are personal. Find this by going to the email tool in D2L and then go to the Settings button. Here you can add a signature (recommended), forward a copy of your incoming messages to an external email account; and choose display settings. Consider checking the box to save a copy of each outgoing message to the sent folder. Folder management in the email tool You can create folders to organize and collect your emails. For example, folders to collect/organize particular courses that you teach. You may decide to keep all of your emails for at least a year in the event of a grade dispute. Consult with your department director for advice on that. When you are ready to delete emails however this will be easy to do. Best practice: To send emails, use the email tool from the Classlist while you are in a course, so you may select whole class or individuals in that class easily. H. Discussion tool Access discussions via the discussion tool or within the content list (if a quicklink has been created for it). When you are on the course home page you can look at the updates widget to discover how many unread messages are waiting for you to view in the discussions. On main discussion page, the # of unread messages will appear in bold beneath each topic. All messages and replies will have the author s name and picture (if they provided one in their profile), unless you set the discussion to be anonymous. Page 3
Viewing/Style choices There are two choices for viewing the messages inside a topic the Grid Style message list or the Reading Style message list. (this is a personal setting) In the Grid Style message list, a list of messages appears at the top of the page, showing the subject, author, and date for each message. Click a message s subject to read the message; the full message appears either at the bottom of the screen or in a new window, depending on your personal settings. In the Reading Style message list, the full text of every message is always displayed. Click the Mark Read link below a message s header to tell the system when you ve read a message. Viewing Aside from your style choice you would use the View drop-down list at the top right of the page to switch between the views. In the threaded view, messages are grouped with their replies (and will provide more context of the conversation). Other options for viewing include: All Messages-unthreaded, Unread Only or Flagged Only. Flagging You can flag a message if you wish. This can be helpful if you need to come back to the message or if you want to collect and view later for example all of the excellent posts. Flagging is for your view only. The student wouldn t know if they were flagged. Create a new {discussion} forum Consider this like a folder to contain a group of discussions, like Week 2 discussions. Or make one folder for all discussions. To create a forum, click on discussion tool then New Forum button. Create a new {discussion} topic This is your actual discussion area where the discussion will take place. To create a discussion topic, click on discussion tool then New Topic button. You can add instructions for the discussion topic NOTE: if you want the discussion to show up within the weekly content area, you would create a *Quicklink to it. Otherwise you would see the discussion via the Discussions Tool only. Compose a new message Click the compose button, enter a subject, add your message. You may attach a file. You may also attach and record an audio clip as well. Instructors will have the ability to PIN a message so that it would always appear at the top of the list. Reply Look for the reply link while inside a particular message that you wish to reply to. Replies will appear indented from the original message and under it. Additional notes regarding the discussions: Instructors may edit or delete any post on the discussion, even if they did not originally compose it. Everyone will have ability to do a spell check, and add an attachment. (Something NEW) Add Audio to your discussions You will notice that while composing your discussion message you can add a recorded audio message. While this is a wonderful tool to incorporate, please keep accessibility in mind. The audio function is Page 4
flash based therefore cannot be recorded while using an ipad or iphone. The time limit is one minute to record. Grading discussions From the discussion area, and in your list of discussions, click on the grading icon (little ruler with check mark). While in the grading interface, if you click on topic score under each student s name you will see all of their postings and have the ability to give that student a grade. There is a box to release the grade as you do them or you can wait and have all of the grades released together at one time, you will have that choice. I. Dropbox Just like in ANGEL, there are dropbox folders that collect student assignments. Dropbox folders may be linked to the grade book as well. You can leave feedback to the student in the dropbox and add an attachment back to the student if you wish to. It is nice because it will be easy to see who you have left feedback to already or who you did not leave feedback to yet. All files submitted will have name, date and time stamp on them. You can download all of the submissions to your computer at one time via one button to zip all submissions. You can arrange for special access to a dropbox folder easily too. In the event you need to allow a student to submit after the deadline or if you need to provide extra time for a student based on accessibility issues. Good news! D2L allows you to create a dropbox for a group. (note: groups need to be set up ahead of time first via the groups tool) This will make it easy to grade and leave feedback for the group. More good news if you are a Turnitin user: Turnitin is integrated into D2L via the dropbox. Basically if you turn the feature on when you make the dropbox it will automatically run it through Tii and generate an originality report. NOTE: you must already be registered with Tii as an instructor for this feature to work. Contact rhadmin@regis.edu and request that you would like to register and get started with Tii. J. Grades *Follow the tutorials in the online training module for specifics on how to set up and use the grade book. Just like in the ANGEL grade book, you need to choose whether your grade book will be set up as a points system or weighted system. (Note: when using a weighted system your categories need to add up to 100%) D2L does offer a grade book setup wizard that is easy to follow and will walk you through set up of your grade book. If you set up your grade book in the MASTER for your course it will carry over to the section. Again, just like in the ANGEL grade book you will set up grade categories and then grade items to go into the categories. D2L will calculate the final grade automatically. You can set up an extra credit item- (bonus item). You can export a.csv file of your final grade book before your course ends to back up and keep with your records. (recommended) Exciting new grade book features There are a variety of grade book functionality that will be new to you as we did not have these features in ANGEL. You will have the ability to order the grade book items any way you wish. You can set up an item in the grade book that will not go towards the final grade calculation (pass/fail item). Page 5
Aside from the 2 grading systems of points and weighted, you can use a formula system: automatically grade users using a custom formula based on achievement on other grade items. E.g. Give users who received at least 50% on all participation grade items a perfect attendance bonus. IF{ MIN{ [P1.Percent], [P2.Percent] } < 50, 0, 1 You can create a grade item that is text based rather that numeric score based. Here you can provide a simple comment such as course evaluation completed. K. Classlist You can use the Classlist to see who s enrolled in your course, check who is online and to send emails and pages. Users who are currently logged into D2L appear with a green dot beside their names. From the Classlist tool you can view user profiles (by clicking on their picture icon), examine user progress and print a classlist. L. Role Switch Located at the very bottom of your course home page, you will find the Role Switch widget. This will allow you to see the course like a student would. Click on the dropdown for the role and choose Student. When you are ready to switch back, return to the role switch widget and M. Edit Course When you want to add or build content pages for your course you can do that in a couple different methods, one method would be via the edit course button located on the lower right nav bar. This will take you to course design accelerator; instructional design wizard; course builder; manage dates; intelligent agents; manage files and view user progress. The simplest way to upload a file for the students is by going to the Content tab, then Manage content, then new topic button, then upload new file or course file and point to something you uploaded on the back end. N. Manage files The back end of your course (behind the scenes) is manage files. You will find that on the left side while under content. (Don t confuse manage content with manage files ; these are two different places.) If you upload a file to the back end under manage files you will then need to link it on the front end under manage content. When you go to new topic you can link to it. Structure on back end of courses will now look like this: Page 6
O. Quizzes The quiz tool in D2L is robust. You will have a variety of quiz question types to choose from. You can still set up the quiz to open and close at restricted times. Quizzes will push grades over to the grade book too. It is easy to set up special access in the quiz tool for those occasions where that is needed. You can view statistics for your quizzes and analyze quiz questions. You can still import large quiz banks in from Respondus if you choose to. P. Group tool If you plan on using groups in your course you will want to go to the Groups tool located on the lower right nav bar. To start, make a new category, think of this as a folder for several groups to be under, for example, for the week 2 discussion you will place your students into groups. You can choose from these enrollment types: # of groups- no auto enrollment; groups of #; # of groups; # of groups- self enrollment; groups of # - self enrollment. So if you knew you had 15 students in your class and you wanted to have groups of 5 students each you would pick, groups of # and indicate 5. You can randomize the users into groups and D2L will pull groups of 5 randomly from your classlist. OR you can pick who you want to be in the group, or you can have students self enroll. You can set up a group dropbox at the time of creating the groups if you need to. You also have the option to create a group discussion for the purpose of collaborating privately amongst the group. (Recommended for group projects) Q. Chat tool The Chat tool is a real-time, text-based collaboration tool. You can use the Chat tool to brainstorm ideas, hold a question and answer period, have a debate or discussion, or organize a remote study group. As opposed to other collaboration tools, such as Discussions, Chat conversations occur in real-time. You can set up course specific chat rooms or you may utilize the chat tool as a virtual office hours. R. Calendar tool Located on both the course home and My Home page in D2L, you can manage your own personal calendar of events or for your course (such as due dates for assignments, etc.) Course related events that you setup in the course, for example quiz/exams, open and close dates for dropbox, discussion etc will automatically get populated in the course calendar, however you may choose to add these manually if you are using the dates for open/close. Page 7