Desire2Learn - Version 10.1 Upgrade Information

Working With Version 10.1

Navigation Improvements

Courses are still made up of widgets; however, widgets contain drop-down menus (called context menus in D2L) to more efficiently add and organize content. These context menus now allow you to move from one tool to another within D2L with ease. The MiniBar and tool bars have been designed to aid when moving within or between courses and are explained further in the content below.

New Features & Improvements

General

Interface and Navigation:

• MiniBar: Main navigation tool to courses, alerts and personal settings. Located on the top of a browser.
  • My Home: Link to the main D2L homepage
  • Course Selector: Allows easy navigation between all your courses. Essentially, allows use of the My Courses widget (located on the My Home page) throughout the D2L environment.
  • Alerts: Collection of Messages (e-mails or pages), Updates (news, due dates, grades), and Subscriptions (blogs or discussions) notices. A red circle appearing on the appropriate alert icon indicates unread Alerts.
  • Personal Settings: A collection of adjustable personal settings that include Profile, Notifications, and Account Settings.
    • The Restore action for impersonation is included in the new MiniBar and can now be accessed from all pages and tools through the Personal Settings drop-down menu.

(Click to Enlarge)

• Context Menus: Actions are now combined into context menus rather than being displayed as individual icons. These new menus allow for quick creation and editing of a course and its contents. See below for example of a context menu for the Discussion tool.

• Custom Link Groups: Allows for instructors to combine course tools into logical groupings within a course on the navigation bar (displayed in a drop-down menu).

Drag & Drop Functionality:

• Upload a single or multiple files by dragging from your desktop for easy creating and updating.
• Reorder content and modules quickly and easily by dragging and dropping content.

*Note: Drag and drop of files from desktop to browser is currently not supported in Internet Explorer 9 or less.

Calendar:

• The calendar selector has moved from the left of the Calendar pages to the top-right, and long course names are displayed with ellipses as required.

Pedagogical

Calendar and Events:

• The Event widget has been combined with the Calendar widget

Discussions:

• When creating and editing a discussion topic, instructors can now select an option that requires students to post a message to the topic before being allowed to read and reply to other messages in the topic

Dropbox:

• Save Draft of Feedback: You can save a draft version of student feedback in the Dropbox prior to publishing it to an individual student or the entire class.
• e-Rater: The e-rater engine, an Educational Testing Service, is now available when you create a dropbox with originality checking. e-rater identifies features related to writing proficiency in student essays so they can be used for scoring and feedback.
• Set Due Date: Now you can create a dropbox folder with a due date. The dropbox will remain open until the end date you provide but any assignments submitted after the due date will be marked late.

Gradebook:

• Simplified Navigation: Have a question about a grade you see in the gradebook? Access the student’s submission from within the gradebook. You no longer need to spend time going to the assignment and searching for the student’s submission.

Quizzes:

• For arithmetic questions where precision is enforced, student answers are properly displayed with the same precision they entered
• A warning message is now displayed when a question is edited and saved if there is no way for students to receive points on the question
• Instructors can configure the # of hours in advance notifications of "Quiz end date approaching" are sent
• Students can now subscribe to receive notifications when a Quiz end date is approaching.

View User Progress:

• The new Class Progress Dashboard provides student performance data across the entire class and through four indicators of performance at the instructor’s fingertips. Indicators are:
  • Grade Performance Summary
  • Content Completion Summary
  • Objective Completion Summary
  • Discussions Participation Summary
• The User Progress tool has been redesigned to provide comprehensive progress reports with better presentation through the use of visualizations, and with improved navigation between users, between courses, and between tools.

Course Management Tools

Attendance Registers:

• Attendance Registers and Schemes are now able to be copied with Copy Course Components located within Edit Course

Calendar:

• When deleting a repeating event, options are available to delete the series, the current occurrence, or the current occurrence and future occurrences

Content:

• Table of Contents: Modules are now collected in a left-side menu allowing for users to view the content as a whole or by individual modules.
• Bookmarks: Lists of topics you bookmark. Add Bookmark icon while viewing a topic to add it to your bookmarks list.
• Document Viewing: Links to Microsoft files and PDF files open directly in the browser, so they appear on screen without having to be downloaded. However, files can still be downloaded if desired.
• Track Activity: Help students track whether they have accessed a document or an activity linked from Content by turning on Automatic Completion or Manual Completion.
• Clearer Visibility Terminology: Rather than hiding a document, you can save it as a draft before publishing. The draft document will be hidden from students.

Edit Course Administration:

• Edit Course Administration page now allows easy access to many more tools, which reduces the need to have these tools added individually to the navigation bar

Email:

• Mail sent from the D2L learning management system is now stored and accessible for review from a new Sent Mail folder inside the Email tool

Retired Tools

With the upgrade comes the retirement of the User Homepages, Articles, and Journal tools. Visit the Retired Tools page to learn about removing your current content and how to replace those tools functionality.