Resources for Students

D2L Updates

New Content (optional). Faculty will notice that they have the option in all of their fall shells to enable New Content. New Content is off by default. However, when you first login to the Content area, you will see a menu item appear prompting you to make a selection. After you make your selection, the menu will be minimized and you can access it any time to change your settings by clicking on the carrot just below the course navigational bar. 

Updated Course Homepage. Faculty now have updated course homepages for their Fall courses. In particular, faculty should note the appearance of the Contact Me widget (to make edits to this widget, review the editing tutorial in the Faculty Resource Center), the Tutoring Appointment widget (Student Success Center will utilize WC online for scheduling), and the Student Care Form (details forthcoming from Joe Edwards). To personalize the Contact Me widget, faculty should review directions in the FRC for customizing default/existing homepages and widgets. 

Word Count in Discussions. Faculty can now view the word count for discussion posts. Word counts appear next to timestamp of the post, whether viewing within the Discussion Topic, or in Evaluation. Students will be able to see their word count in the bottom left of their screen as they compose their posts. 

No SMS (text) notifications. D2L discontinued the SMS option for notifications. Students and faculty can still receive notifications via email, or via push notifications on their phone if the Pulse App is installed.

Minimum Browser Requirements for D2L: In July, D2L increased the minimum supported browser. This information has also been distributed to students. Supported browsers are now: Chrome 124+, Edge 124+, Safari 17+, and Firefox 124+

Assignment Annotation Menu icons changed. While no functionality has changed, D2L updated the icons for the annotation tool used while grading assignments (see below). The top image is the legacy toolbar, and the bottom menu is the updated version.

Evaluator Tool in Assignments. When creating or editing assignment folders, you will see an option in the Evaluation and Feedback settings menu to add evaluators. This setting is designed for courses with more than one instructor and allows you to restrict who assigns which items. Additionally, you can also who can publish grades, should a primary faculty wish to review all feedback before publication. You can see a full tutorial in the Faculty Resource Center here.

Automatic Zero Option in Gradebook. When setting up the gradebook using the wizard, faculty will see an option to automatically enter zeros for assignments whose deadlines have passed. It is important to note this feature only works with assignments/quizzes with due dates, and extending a deadline after it has passes will not remove zeros from the gradebook.

what's all this about the oscqr rubric?

Online Learning is in the process of adopting SUNY’s OSCQR Rubric as part of new online course approval and regular course review. You will soon be sent some videos explaining the rubric and how we’ll use it at PSC. An important stage of this process will include the re-forming the Online Education Steering Committee (OESC) to both comply with federal and state regulations and to assure quality for our community of learners. The OESC will be charged with assessing course shells for concepts that fall under the regulations, like Regular and Substantive Interaction, and for traditional concepts like accessibility. 

Online course review is part of the annual assessment of online learning; such data drives and supports institutional paths of continuous improvement but is part of external assessor reporting requirements. We are excited to help support faculty on this path to continuous improvement. The more we know about our strengths, the more we can capitalize on them, and the more we know about our shortcomings, the more we can do to strategically improve them.

Why did we choose OSCQR? OSCQR is a research-backed formative rubric designed to focus on course improvement. Because it focuses on the course itself, as opposed to teaching or content, it makes it perfectly suited to these purposes. I am excited to help support faculty on this path to continuous improvement. The more we know about our strengths, the more we can capitalize on them, and the more we know about our shortcomings, the more we can do to strategically improve them. However, we need a great team of faculty volunteers to serve on the committee–if you are interested, please contact your dean.

Open SUNY Center for Online Teaching Excellence developed the OSCQR rubric in 2014. The open-access rubric gained a number of accolades and grew in prominence, especially after partnering with the Online Learning Consortium in 2016.

What is OSCQR Assessing? Looking at online course design, the rubric has 50 standards that use the following scale: Sufficiently Present, Minor Revision (½ hour or less), Moderate Revision (½-2 hours), Major Revision (2+ hours), and Not Applicable. The option “Not Applicable” allows us to not score an item as a negative/absent when it is not necessary, which will help us have a more accurate picture of strengths and areas truly in need of improvement.

OSCQR has a lot of standards–and that can seem overwhelming. However, the standards provide evidence of best practices most of which faculty are consistently and unquestionably completing (such as having a gradebook for students). The rubric will provide the evidence of us meeting that standard. 

Each standard links to a page with a wealth of resources including: a video explaining the standard, the justification for the standard, examples of its implementation, and related research/resources. Using a rubric with embedded instruction gives professors support and autonomy in improving their courses while minimizing any burdens of time on the reviewers. It is important to note that the resources are not exhaustive of all options that meet a particular standard. In fact, OSCQR encourages the submission of new strategies that meet standards to continue to add to the repository.

oscqr rubric categories

What is the Assessment Process Like? Each year, five, randomly selected online courses from each division will be assessed. Feedback will be shared with the instructor, but all data will be anonymized (reportable only by division, unless identifiable). Faculty may also voluntarily submit courses for assessment.

Only completed course shells will be assessed. If a course shell is volunteered for/randomly selected for review, your course shell will be copied into a sandbox shell, which will remove all student data. Demo students will be added to the sandbox version of the course in order to trigger D2L’s gradebook creation. Two committee members will be added to the sandbox shell to assess using the OSCQR rubric. Members will confer and compile any qualitative feedback for the shell. After the shell is assessed, committee members will be removed from the shell. The copied shell will be deleted once the aggregate assessment report is complete.

What Will Happen with the Data? Faculty whose shells were assessed will be provided with their individual feedback. All data will be anonymized and aggregated and used for the assessment of Online Learning. Shells earning less than 80% on the OSCQR rubric are encouraged to work on the suggested revisions with the help of Online Learning.

Course shells that score less than 80%* on the rubric will, with the help of Online Learning, be revised. This should ideally happen before the next time the course is taught. Shells that are identified as needing substantial revision will be assessed by Online Learning only again the following year for evidence of improvement. This data will not be part of the annual assessment reports. Shells that show no evidence of improvement on standards will be reported to the coordinator. Shells that show improvement, but do not yet meet 80% of standards, will continue to work with Online Learning and, as long as continual improvements are made, no additional steps will be taken.

* The value of 80% is set as an initial benchmark and would be evaluated by the OESC for viability.