Using D2L Course Tools
By: Sara Selby, MA
South Georgia State College
Discussions
As reviewed previously in this course, discussions form a basic building block of online course delivery and can be an effective channel for fostering engagement, a catalyst for reflecting upon course content, and a means of establishing an active – and interactive – course community. Before you use the Discussions tool, you should examine your learning objectives to determine what you can achieve with discussions. In general, instructors use discussion topics in online courses to help learners develop understanding and application of the course concepts about which they have read, often posing problems for which learners are asked to propose solutions. Learners post their comments and respond to one another in the same forum, asynchronously, to form threaded discussions so that they can reflect on different perspectives and further develop their thoughts.
Create a Forum
To use the Discussions tool, first, create a Forum
Click on Discussions in the course navbar (it may be nested in an item such as Communication).
In the Discussions window, click New and choose New Forum. A forum is an organizational unit for the discussions, and you will create your topics within the forum. You might choose to have just one forum for the entire course, or you might wish to have a separate forum for each module. Whatever method you choose, you will need to create a forum and at least one topic, as learners cannot see a forum that contains no topics.
Notice that the New Forum window that opens for you to create your forum contains two tabs: Properties and Restrictions. You will work in the Properties tab first.
In the Properties tab, give your forum a descriptive title. If you check the option box underneath the title, a topic with the same title will be automatically created. Use the HTML editor (text box) to provide a description, which will appear below the forum title in the Discussions section of the course. This description is not where you should include your discussion prompt; you will create a topic for that purpose once you’ve created the forum. The description is optional, but this is a good place for you to introduce the forum and the topics you will include within the forum. You may insert images, hyperlinks, videos, or quicklinks into the text of your description by using the controls at the top of the HTML editor.
Next, locate the Options list directly below the HTML editing box, and choose the options that you wish to use to govern how learners may post. The question marks to the right of each option will provide you with more information about the option to help you determine if you wish to impose any of those options. You will need to adjust the availability settings if you don’t want the forum to be visible all the time (which is the default setting). If you choose to lock a forum, it will still be visible, but learners will not be able to add any posts to it. The options you choose for availability and locking affect all of the topics included in the forum; if you do not wish them to apply to all topics, leave the forum settings and the defaults, and you can set options for each topic individually when you create the topics.
Please note that there are 3 choices of save options. Please only select Save to save the settings you chose for the forum.
Next, open the Restrictions tab to set Release Conditions and other restrictions if you so desire. You may wish to limit posting in the forum to only those learners who have met certain conditions, which you can set in the Release Conditions section. You may wish to allow only certain groups of learners to use this forum, which you can set in the Group and Section Restrictions. This is particularly useful if you are using group projects in your course and you wish to establish a forum for each group.
When you have made your choices on this tab, click Save and Close or Save and Add Topic to create a topic for the forum.
Create a Topic
A topic is created by selecting Add Topic from the Forum context menu, which is similar to how you created a new forum. However, notice that in the New Topic window, you see four tabs: Properties, Restrictions, Assessment, and Objectives.
In the Properties section, choose the forum in which you wish your topic to appear or create a new forum for it.
Give your topic a descriptive title and use the description box to write your discussion prompt and specific instructions for posting. You may insert images, hyperlinks, videos, or quicklinks into the text if necessary.
Select the options you wish to impose. If your topic requires learners to state an opinion or interpretation, you might consider choosing the option that users must start a thread before they can read and reply to other threads, in order to encourage genuine responses.
You may want to incorporate a rating system for learners to respond to each other; learners cannot rate their own posts, just those of their classmates. If you wish to enable the rating system, you have a few choices of rating scheme. No ratings is the default. Availability settings and locking options are configured next.
The Restrictions tab contains Release Conditions and Group and Section Restrictions just as for the Forum.
The Assessments tab allows you to associate the topic with an existing grade item or to create a new grade item for the topic, to set the number of points for the topic to count (note that the number you set here must be the same as the number of points set for the grade item), to associate any rubric you might have created, and to choose whether or not you wish to assess each individual post by a learner in the topic.
The Objectives tab allows you to associate any learning objectives you might have established for the course.
Click Save and Close or Save and New if you wish to create another topic.
Once you have saved your topic(s), you will be directed to the Discussions List, where you will see the forums and topics you created.
There are a number of actions you can take using the More Actions drop-down menu:
If you wish to delete a forum or topic, click on More Actions and choose Delete from the drop-down menu to open a window where you can choose what you wish to delete.
If you accidentally delete a topic, you can use the Restore option from the drop-down menu to reverse the deletion.
If you wish to reorder forums or topics, click on More Actions and choose Reorder from the drop-down menu to open a window where you can change the order of any forum or topic.
If you wish to move a topic from one forum to another, click on the arrow to the right of the topic title and choose Edit topic, then choose a different forum and click Save and Close to return to the Discussions List.
Respond to a Topic
To post a response to a topic, you (or your learners) can:
Click on the topic from the Discussions List.
Click Start a New Thread below the topic to open the response pane.
Type a title in the Subject box and then type your response in the HTML editor below.
Options underneath the HTML editor allow you to pin and/or subscribe to the thread, add attachments, and post the same response to other topics simultaneously.
If you wish to reply to someone else’s thread, simply click Reply to Thread beneath their post.
As the instructor, you have the ability to edit or delete any thread in a discussion topic by clicking the arrow next to the title of the thread and choosing the appropriate option from the drop-down menu.
You can view statistics for learners in a specific forum or topic by clicking the arrow next to the forum or topic title and choosing View Forum/Topic Statistics. You can view statistics for all learners, topics, and forums in your course by navigating to the Discussions window from the course navbar and clicking on the Statistics tab.
If you choose Assess Topic from the drop-down menu for a topic, a window will open that will enable you to evaluate postings if you have associated the topic with a grade item in the Gradebook. However, it is strongly suggested that you grade discussions through the Gradebook so that you can also provide feedback in the feedback icon for each student in the feedback column and, if you’ve attached a rubric to the grade item, you will also be able to complete and submit the rubric so that students know how their points were calculated.
Searching Discussions
You can search within a discussion topic by navigating to that topic and using the search box in the upper right corner of the topic window. Type your search term (author or keyword) and click on the magnifying glass to launch your search.
Quizzes
You can use the Quiz tool in D2L to create both formative and summative assessments that can be automatically associated with rubrics, grade items, and learning objectives. You should begin by building your questions in the Question Library in order to use those questions across multiple quizzes and/or randomize the order in which questions appear within a quiz. Questions created in the Question Library can also be used in surveys or self-assessments and can be imported from one course to another.
Create a New Quiz with New Questions
Create a New Quiz with Imported Questions
Create a Question Bank
Video: Question Library – Benefits of Question Library
While questions can be created using the Quizzes, Surveys, or Self-Assessments tools directly, any questions created in such manner will need to be imported back to the Question Library in order to use them again.
Begin your question-building by choosing the tool you wish to use (Quizzes, Surveys, or Self-Assessments) and clicking on the Question Library tab. Then click New and select the type of question you wish to create from the drop-down menu.
Video: Question Library – Overview of Question Types
True-false and multiple-choice questions are standard formats.
Video: Question Library – Create a New (T/F) Question
To create a multiple-choice question,
Click New and select Multiple Choice Question from the drop-down menu.
Give your question a title if you wish (this will not be visible to learners).
Set the point value and difficulty level for the question.
Type the text of your question in the HTML Editor. If you wish to number or letter your responses, choose the appropriate enumeration, but if you wish to randomize the responses (highly recommended), keep the default of no enumeration and check the randomize options box.
Type your response choices in the value column. Designate 100% in the weight column for the correct response (or weight responses for partial credit).
Type any feedback you wish to provide for each response in the corresponding feedback column.
Click Preview to check that everything looks okay, then click Save.
Use a multi-select question if more than one answer is correct.
Video: Question Library – Create a Multi-Select Question
Written response or short answer formats are good for open-ended questions.
Video: Question Library – Create a Question Using a Regular Expression (short answer)
Multi-short answer questions allow you to include multiple answer boxes for a single question (such as name three of the seven deadly sins).
Fill-in-the-blanks, matching, and ordering questions are good for simple recall of information.
Video: Question Library – Create Complex Fill in the Blanks Questions
Video: Question Library – Create a Matching Question
Arithmetic and significant figures questions are useful in math and science disciplines.
Video: Question Library – Create an Arithmetic Question
Video: Question Library – Create a Significant Figures Question
Likert questions may be used only in surveys.
Sections
Once you’ve built your questions in Question Library, you may wish to organize them into sections.
Video: Question Library – Create a New Section
The Quizzes tool enables you to build quizzes from the questions you created in the Question Library, to automatically assess those quizzes, and to link the assessment to a grade item in the Gradebook. You can use the Quizzes tool to control the number of attempts, to set restrictions, and to control the security of the quiz.
Shuffling Questions
To shuffle the order of questions in a quiz, use the Properties pane of the Quizzes tool.
Video: Quizzes – Shuffle Questions
Bonus Questions
Designating some questions as bonus questions is easy to do in the Quizzes tool.
Video: Quizzes – Create Bonus Quiz Questions
Create a Quiz with a Randomized Set of Questions
Enable Auto Submission and Automatic Export
Once you have built your quiz, in order to enable auto submission and automatic export to grades, navigate to the Assessment tab of the quiz and check those options.
Assessment Tab
Restrictions tab
To administer a quiz to learners, make sure that it is active by clicking the Restrictions tab and verifying its status.
Grant Special Access and Reset Quiz Attempts for Learners
Assignment Folders
The Assignments tool allows you to create folders to which learners can upload files. Submissions are time and date stamped so that you know when the work was uploaded. You can accept individual or group submissions. You can also use the tool to associate rubrics, evaluate work, add feedback, and link to grades. The Assignment Folder was formerly called the Dropbox, so you may still hear it called that.
Create a Submission Folder
Create a folder by:
Selecting the Assignments tool from the course navbar.
Click New Submission Folder.
In the Properties tab, give your folder a name and designate its type (individual or group; if you choose group, you must have already created your groups via the Groups tool in Course Administration).
If the submissions are to be graded, associate the folder with a grade category and item (or create a new category and/or item) and provide a maximum points value for the submissions in the Out Of box.
If you wish to use a rubric to grade the submissions, associate the folder with the rubric. Type instructions (such as number of files allowed per submission, number of submissions, etc.) in the HTML Editor. If you wish to attach any files or record audio, do so here.
Set limits for submissions in the Submission Options, and if you wish to be notified when submissions are made, enter your preferred email address in the Notification Email box.
Click Save.
In the Restrictions tab, if you wish to limit the visibility of the folder, set the start and end dates. Set the due date for submissions. Attach release conditions if you wish to control which learners are able to submit work. Allow users with special access to submit files outside the normal availability by adding them to Special Access.
Once you have established your folders, the Assignments page will display a list of folders created with a summary of the Total Files, Unread Files, Flagged Files, and Due Date for each folder.
Click on the folder title to navigate to learners’ submissions, where you can view and evaluate each submission by clicking on each learner’s name.
If you wish to download submissions in bulk, click the checkbox to the left of learners’ names and then click the Download icon just above the submissions list. Each file will have a unique identifier. Do not change the names of the files.
You can add feedback to those files and then upload them by clicking Add Feedback Files at the top of the submissions window. The identifiers should route them to the appropriate learner, but if the identifiers are not recognized, you can manually link them.
Rubrics
Use of rubrics allows you to share with your learners the criteria by which their work will be evaluated, thus letting them know what is expected before they submit the assignment. Rubrics help to ensure consistency in grading. When creating a rubric, make sure your criteria align with the outcomes you wish to measure, and make sure that your levels of achievement are clearly defined.
With the Rubrics tool in D2L, you can easily create an analytic or holistic rubric and associate it with a course object and grade item. Analytic rubrics may contain multiple assessment criteria and levels of achievement, while holistic rubrics contain a single criterion and multiple levels of achievement. Rubrics can be associated with assignment folders, discussion topics, and quizzes (note, though, that those associated with quizzes are visible to you for grading purposes, but they are not visible to learners until they submit the quiz). When creating a rubric, its status will be draft until you have completed it; to link it to a course object, you must change its status to published.
Create an Analytic Rubric
With an analytic rubric, each of the criteria is assessed individually to produce a cumulative score. D2L allows for customization of points in the analytic rubric creation process so that you can weigh some criteria more heavily than others if you wish. Though an analytic rubric requires more time and planning to develop and to use than does a holistic one, it does enable customized feedback.
Create a Holistic Rubric
A holistic rubric uses a single scale to evaluate a learner’s overall performance, and criteria cannot be weighted. A holistic rubric is more generalized than an analytic one and does not allow for as much specificity in feedback.
Attaching Rubrics to Existing Activities
Linking a rubric to an assignment folder, discussion topic, or quiz is very easy to do. Be aware that once you have linked a rubric to a course object, you cannot delete that rubric, and once you have used it for grading, it will be locked so that you cannot edit it.
Grades
Set up the Gradebook
D2L’s gradebook wizard simplifies the set-up and management of a grading system for purposes of assessing your learners’ work. Before you use the wizard, you should determine what work you will evaluate, how you wish to categorize grades, and what grading system you will use. The wizard will ask for that information, as well as how the final grade will be released, how grades will be calculated, how many decimal places to display, and how learners will see their grades displayed.
Using the Gradebook Setup Wizard
To use the wizard, click Grades from the navbar on the course homepage.
1. Choose Setup Wizard from the options that appear towards the top of the window to begin the 7-step process of configuring your gradebook. The first step is choosing your grading system. If you consider every grade item or category to be worth a percentage of the final grade, then you should choose Weighted. If each item is worth a certain number of points and the final grade is calculated by dividing the number of points earned by the number of points possible, then you should choose Points. If you use your own formula for determining the final grade based on points, then you should choose Formula.
2. The second step is to determine how the final grade is released. If you choose Calculated final grade, then the final grade will be calculated by the grade book, and you will not be able to adjust it unless you adjust individual item grades. If you choose Adjusted final grade, then you will be able to manually change the final grade without any manipulation of individual item grades.
3. The third step concerns grade calculation and asks you to determine how you want ungraded items to appear. If you choose Drop ungraded items, then dashes will appear in the gradebook for those items and they will not be considered in the final grade until they are completed and scored or until grades are entered manually for them. If you choose Treat ungraded items as 0, then a 0 will appear for those items and they will be calculated in the final grade until grades are overwritten or entered manually for them. If you check Automatically keep final grade updated, D2L will continually update the final grade every time an item’s grade is populated or manually entered in the gradebook.
4. The fourth step requires you to choose the default grade scheme. If your institution has created a grade scheme to show levels of achievement, it will appear in the list under Organization Schemes. You may choose that scheme, or you may wish to create your own scheme. You can do so by clicking New Scheme and giving it a name. Then you must define the ranges in your grade scheme. Identify a symbol (perhaps using letters such as A+, A, A-, B+, B, B-, etc., or words such as Excellent, Good, Fair, etc.) and the range of scores corresponding to that symbol. You can also make color associations to grade ranges. Begin with the lowest range. Enter the symbol, then the lowest value to mark the start of the range, then the color associated, and then the highest value to mark the end of the range. Click Save and Close and your new scheme will be added to the list of grade schemes from which you can choose under Course Schemes.
5. The fifth step concerns managing view display options (the view that you as an instructor will see in the gradebook) and asks you to specify how many decimal places should be displayed. You may choose to display from 0 to 5 digits beyond the decimal point.
6. The sixth step concerns student view display options (the view that learners will see in the gradebook), and you have several options to control what learners can see. The first options control grade details; you may choose to allow learners to see the points grade, weighted grade, grade scheme symbol, and/or grade scheme color by choosing each of those options. You can also specify how many decimal places should be displayed to learners, and again you may choose to display from 0 to 5 digits beyond the decimal point. You may also set how many characters of text (from 0 to 50) display for a grade item and whether learners can see how the final grade was calculated.
7. The seventh step displays a summary of your grades setup and allows you to go back to make any necessary revisions. Once you are satisfied with the setup, click Finish. The next window enables you to create grade categories and items.
Organize your Gradebook
If you use a weighted grading system, you must use categories to specify how the total weight of groups of grade items are calculated in the final grade. If you use a points grading system, categories can be used to organize grade items, but they are not required. How you set up categories will vary depending on which grading system you chose in the setup wizard.
1. Choose Create a new grade category and give the category a name. You may give the category an abbreviated name and a description (both are optional).
Weighted If you have created a weighted gradebook, you will be asked to specify the weight of the category in the final grade calculation and the distribution of the weight across the items in the category. If you choose to have the weight distributed evenly across all items because you want all items in the category to carry the same amount, you will be able to specify a number of highest and/or lowest non-bonus grade items to drop. You will have the option to allow learners’ grades for the category to exceed 100%. You will also have options to allow the display of average and grade distributions to learners. Click the Restrictions tab at the top of the window to set visibility and release conditions.
Points If you have created a points gradebook, you will have options to allow learners’ grades for the category to exceed 100% and to exclude the category from the final grade calculation. You will also have the same distribution, display, and restriction options as the weighted gradebook users.
2. When you have finished setting the options, click Save and Close if you have no more categories to create or Save and New to save this category and create another one. Continue until you have created all the categories you need.
3. Next, create grade items to populate your categories. There are several ways to do this. In the Grades widget, click the Manage Grades tab and click New to choose Item from the drop-down menu. Choose an item type from the list. If you want to associate a grade item with a course activity, you should use numeric grade items. Name the item, give it an abbreviated name, and associate it with one of the categories you created. Fill in any other fields required and click Save and Close.
Create a Grade Item - Points
You can create a grade item by navigating directly to and editing a discussion topic, quiz, or assignment (for example, choose a discussion topic in the Discussions widget and click Edit topic from the drop-down menu accessed via the arrow to the right of the topic title; click on either the Assessment or Properties tab – depending on the type of object – to create the grade item or to associate to an existing grade item).
Associate an Activity with a Grade Item
You can create milestone grade items that calculate achievement across categories and items by choosing New Item from Manage Grades and then choosing Calculated. Provide a name (such as Midterm) and then choose the items you wish to include in the calculation. Click Save and Close and the item will appear in your gradebook.
Once you have created all your grade categories and items, you can view your gradebook by clicking on the Grades widget in the course navbar and choosing the Manage Grades tab. If you wish to reorder your categories, click More Actions and choose Reorder, then adjust your sort order by changing the numbers to the right of the category titles. Grade items can be reordered in the same way.
Enter Grades
Entering grades in your gradebook can be done in several ways. You can switch to a spreadsheet view if you wish to enter multiple grades for multiple learners.
Navigate to the Grades widget from the course navbar.
Click on the Enter Grades tab.
Click on Switch to Spreadsheet View, where you can enter the grades for all your learners.
Click Save to share the grades with your learners.
Click Switch to Standard View to return to the default gradebook view.
To enter grades for learners individually, click on the learner’s name in the gradebook and then enter the grade(s) for the grade item(s) and click Save and Close.
Follow these steps to enter grades for a specific grade item:
Click the contextual arrow to the right of the name of that item in your gradebook and select Grade All from the drop-down menu (you can also grade an entire category in this same way by selecting Grade All from the category’s drop-down menu).
If you use a Rubric, select the Rubric icon next to the student’s name and complete the rubric.
Click Save and Record and the points from the rubric will record into the grade column.
Enter the grades and click Save and Close. The grades will appear in your gradebook and be visible to learners. You can also navigate to a specific activity in the course, grade the activity within its respective tool, and then publish the grades to the gradebook.
If you don’t want learners to see a grade category or item, click on the category or item name, then click on the Restrictions tab and choose Hide this category (or grade item), then click Save and Close. You might choose to make categories or items visible for a certain amount of time, and that can be set in the Restrictions tab as well.
In the gradebook, you can tell if final grades are visible to learners by looking at the open and closed eye icons next to the grades.
You may wish to exclude some categories or items from the final grade calculation. If you use a weighted grading system, in the Manage Grades window, choose the category or item you wish to exclude and set the weight to 0, then click Save and Close.
If you use a points grading system, in the Manage Grades window, choose the category or item you wish to exclude and select the Exclude from Final Grade Calculation option, then click Save and Close.
If you use a formula grading system, simply remove that category or item from your formula.
If you wish to delete a category or grade item and it is not associated with a course object, simply go to Manage Grades, click More Actions and choose Delete, then select the category or item and click Delete. A confirmation pane will pop up asking if you are sure you wish to delete it. Confirm that you do by clicking Delete, and the category or item will be deleted.
If you wish to delete an associated grade item, you must first disassociate it. Follow these steps to dissociate a grade item:
Navigate to and edit the course object with which it is associated, which you do by choosing the Assessment or Properties tab – depending on the type of object – and click on Choose a grade item from the drop-down Grade Item menu.
Click Save and Close.
Now the grade item can be deleted from Manage Grades by clicking More Actions.
Choose Delete.
Select the item and click Delete.
Follow these steps to import grades from CSV or TXT files:
Choose the Grades widget in the course navbar and click on Enter Grades.
Click Import and follow the steps indicated.
You can export grades by choosing the Grades widget, clicking on Enter Grades, then clicking Export, selecting certain options, and choosing either Export to CSV or Export to Excel.