November 15

Some Highlights of the November 28th MR3 Update

Just a few highlights from the update. Some are new features, others are fixes to issues experienced by on-campus users.

– HTML Accessibility Checker. (new feature)

  • An accessibility checker is now available within the HTML Editor for use within Content, Widgets, Quizzes, Assignments, Calendar, and any other tools where an instructor or student can access the HTML Editor.
  • The accessibility checker is available on the HTML Editor bar. After you add content to the HTML Editor, you can click the checker to ensure that the HTML page conforms to WCAG and Section 508 accessibility standards.
    • location of the new accessibility checker in the D2L WYSIWYG editor

– Assignment folders available as release conditions again! (fix)

  • This is a fix. Since the last update it has not been possible to use any of the Assignment folder conditions as a release condition. With this release this bug has been squashed!

– Long Answer (LA) question renamed Written Response (WR) (change)

  • The Long Answer (LA) question type (Quizzes, Surveys) has a new name: Written Response (WR). Nothing about the functionality of the question type has changed.

– THE ICONS ARE BACK!!! (update)

  • Previously, icons displayed in Content to help users distinguish between content file types (for example, an icon for a video topic or an icon for a discussion topic). Now, icons reflecting the Daylight look and feel are re-introduced in Content. These icons are visible in the main Table of Contents view, the Module Content view, and the Table of Contents fly-out menu when viewing a topic or activity.
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– Quizzes – shuffle question order at quiz level (new feature)

  • To discourage cheating in quizzes, instructors can now shuffle the order of all questions in quizzes or specific groups of questions (sections) in quizzes. For example, an instructor could shuffle questions 1-10 in a quiz, or shuffle questions 3-10 (grouping those questions into a section) and retain the order of questions 1-2 at the start of the quiz.
  • When editing a quiz in the Quizzes tool, a new option to Shuffle order of questions at the quiz level displays in the Quiz Questions section. When creating a new section to group specific questions in a quiz, a new option to Shuffle order of questions in this section is visible in the Display Options section.
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  • Once the shuffle option is selected, a shuffle icon appears next to each affected question in the quiz.
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– Hide Assignment folders (new feature)

  • Instructors can now set the visibility state for draft content within assignment submission folders in Content and Assignments. When content is in a draft state, it is not visible to learners in Brightspace Learning Environment.
  • When instructors have set the visibility to draft, the hidden icon appears in the instructor view of the assignment.

 

The full release notes: MR3 Release Notes and Fixed Issues (PDF)

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August 22

D2L for Students: Pulse App

Pulse App looks on a phone The basics: It keeps students on schedule.

Instructors: Use dates in D2L.

Both for Android and IOS platforms, ready for free download. It is built into the system so the students see courses they are enrolled in (that were requested by the instructor  to appear in D2L Brightspace Learning Environment).

Ease of use, student centered: Shows calendar, courses, notifications.

The app is color coded and students can filter through courses.

Notifications: updates e.g. new announcement, new content, new grade (students need to subscribe in the Learning Environment before they get notified in the app). Pulse app draws from courses but students can add their own notes.

Faculty can help by setting the dates in announcements, content, assignment folders (dropbox) and quizzes and displaying it in calendar. You go to restrictions to manage dates and whenever you specify a due (or end) date it will automatically feed into Pulse.

Category: D2L Tip of the Month, How Does It Work?, Online Teaching Pedagogy, Product Watch, Spotlight on Ed Tech | LEAVE A COMMENT
April 18

D2L Brightspace The Daylight Experience

**Attention – If you don’t want to read further just check out this super short overview video! 🙂

D2L Brightspace is bringing a new design with their updates. Daylight: the overarching project name for the user interface change of design – to help everything be more web responsive.

The biggest reason for this change is to make D2L easy to use on tablets or mobile devices – keeping up with e-learning trends.

Here are some of the visual changes:

Courses will be listed  by tiles instead of text links.

courses as tiles not text in D2L

D2L will keep the same functionality, this is just a change in the user interface design, new font style, more pictures, slight changes on home page and navigation bar, and drop down menu more defined.

deesktop vs. mobile page widthIn addition, click here for a starter guide to Daylight experience.

Finally, a full one-hour Webinar about the Daylight experience (click to access).

 

 

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August 9

5 WAYS TO SAVE TIME WITH RESPONDUS 4.0

Respondus 4.0 News can be found here.

Instructors use Respondus 4.0 because it saves them time preparing online tests. Lots of time. Here are just five ways Respondus 4.0 accomplishes that.

1. Import Wizard
The feature with the greatest time-saving potential is the Import Wizard. Questions for an entire exam can be imported with Respondus 4.0 in minutes. For example, an exam already in MS Word format can be imported with images, equations, tables, and most types of formatting. This article explains how it works: Importing Questions from MS Word with Respondus 4

2. Respondus Test Bank Network
Publisher test banks typically include thousands of questions for a textbook, but using the questions to create online exams can be cumbersome — unless you use Respondus 4.0. Over 25 of the leading textbook publishers in higher education make their test banks available from the Respondus Test Bank Network. These ready-to-use questions make creating an online exam a breeze with Respondus 4.0. Learn more by watching this video: Using Publisher Test Banks with Respondus 4.0

3. Publish Wizard
The Publish Wizard is part of the “magic” of Respondus 4.0. Once an exam is created, it takes less than a minute to publish an assessment to one or more courses in a Learning Management System. When an institution has a campus-wide license, administrators can input “preconfigured server settings” so instructors only have to enter their user name and password for the LMS. This video shows how it can be set up: Using Preconfigured Server Settings

4. Moving Exams Between Learning Systems
Respondus 4.0 makes it easy to move exams from one learning system to another. This is useful when more than one LMS is used at an institution, or when an instructor moves to an institution using a different learning system.  Simply “retrieve” the original exam using Respondus 4.0 and then “publish” it to the new system. The entire process takes just a few minutes, as shown in this video: Moving Assessments Between Two Learning Systems

5. Working Offline
Sure, you usually have access to an Internet connection. But when you don’t, it’s nice to be able to get work done with Respondus 4.0 because most tasks can be done offline. The client-based interface for Respondus 4.0 is also faster than web-based applications because you don’t have to wait for web pages to load.

A few minutes here, a few hours there … it all adds up to tremendous time savings with Respondus 4.0. You won’t find a faster way to create online test.

(This post taken from Respondus.com Blog.)

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August 1

Brightspace Binder

This week, a new feature appeared for our students in D2L Brightspace. It is a learning tool called Binder, and it unifies essential functions today’s students need: it places all course materials in one place, they can reach them from any device (lap top, tablet, phone) online and offline, they can highlight the documents and study directly from the app.

Here is a brief overview:

  • For our SCSU students, it appears directly on the course content page (there is a button “Send to Binder”)
  • It is a one step process to create a Binder account and it is linked to their D2L Brightspace
  • It allows for 2 GB of space
  • It supports a variety of document types
  • They can sort and filter documents
  • They can create annotations and mark up the documents

D2L Binder2

D2L Binder

 

 

 

 

Category: D2L Tip of the Month, How Does It Work?, Open Educational Resources, Product Watch, Spotlight on Ed Tech | LEAVE A COMMENT
June 22

Respondus Assessment Tool

Respondus is a powerful tool for creating and managing exams that can be printed to paper or published directly to D2L Brightspace. Exams are created offline directly in the software, then quickly uploaded to your specific D2L course. This time-saver tool is available to St. Cloud State faculty, so if you wish to use it let us know and we will instal it and give you a quick tutorial on how to use it.

Here, I will list the major features and provide 5 minute video tutorials for creating your quizzes and publishing them to your D2L course.

Authoring Features

  • Create exams and assessments offline using a Windows interface
  • Supports up to 15 question types, including calculated and algorithmic formats
  • Import questions from MS Word (including embedded images), rich-text, QTI, and tab/comma delimited formats
  • Access to thousands of Respondus-compatible publisher test banks – FREE to instructors who adopt a participating textbook

Preview, Publish and Printing Features

  • Preview questions before publishing them to D2L
  • Publish exams and assessments directly to an online course (media files are automatically uploaded)
  • Determine point values and exam settings offline
  • Print exams/surveys directly from Respondus, or save files to MS Word or rich-text format

Retrieval and Reporting Features

  • Retrieve exams from the leading learning platforms, complete with media files*
  • Retrieve custom reports, such as student scores, summary statistics, and answer distributions*
  • Download answer databases for quizzes or surveys and save them in an Excel-compatible format*
  • Archive and restore exam/survey projects (including media content) with one click — ideal for providing a colleague with a ready-to-use exam
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