D2L: New features in the new version of D2L

[Laura Gibbs]

Are there things you have noticed in the new version of D2L that are significantly changed from the version we were using last year? Share your observations here - along with any tips and tricks you want to suggest!

[Laura Gibbs]

HOMEPAGES and WIDGETS. The widgets area, and the HTML editor for creating widgets, is very much changed from last year, and so is the interface for laying out the homepage. This is something very important to me - since my courses are 100% online, the D2L area is like my classroom space, and I want it to look nice and be fun. In terms of the final results that students see, the options for configuring widgets and homepages is not really changed - but the process that instructors use to create their widgets and customize their homepage is definitely different. I wrote up some notes about it here based on my experience in getting my courses set up:
Create a D2L Homepage with Widgets

[Laura Gibbs]

D2L CALENDAR. One change I noticed when updating all the releases dates on all my quizzes (it takes me THREE DAYS to do this, because I have hundreds of quizzes across my classes, and each has a start and a stop day... ugh: why can't D2L let me mass edit quizzes that have the same dates...?) - anyway, what I noticed that there is a very handy option now that you can automatically include a dated quiz in your D2L Course Calendar. This definitely was not possible before - and it is a good new feature. If I am going to all the trouble of entering release dates for the quizzes, yes, I want them in the Calendar, so I checked - hundreds and hundreds of times - the little box to add the quiz to the Calendar.

So, the Calendar is now useful to me in a way that it was not before, because it is automatically populated with my quiz start and stop dates. As a result, I've included the D2L Calendar widget (it's listed under "System Widgets") in my course homepages.

Since I did not use the Calendar in the past, I don't know if this is a new feature, or an old one, but students can view a COMBINED COURSE CALENDAR with all their due dates together. Depending on how systematic instructors are in putting deadlines in the Calendar, this Combined D2L Calendar could be quite useful to students! Here are the notes I wrote up for my students prompting them to view their Calendar as a combined course calendar if they want:
Desire2Learn: Combined Courses Calendar

Unfortunately, the D2L Calendar is very very VERY primitive compared to the Google Calendar: it has no notifications, and no real alternate views. Because I wanted my students to be able to get email and cell phone notifications, and also to have an agenda view (listing only active events; not empty space, as in the D2L calendar), I created a Google Calendar for each of my classes, and embedded it as a widget in Desire2Learn. This is very handy - that way students get all the advantages of Google Calendar, but my dates are also included in their D2L Calendar if they are wanting to combine calendars across courses. Because the agenda view of the embedded Google calendar looks so different from the D2L calendar, I don't think it is confusing to have them both on the homepage. Here's what it looks like - as you can tell, my class is very due date oriented (my students' single biggest problem is time management) - this way, along the top row of the homepage they have two different calendar views plus an automated text alert (javascript widget) about what is due that day.

Also, you can log in with the username oustudent and password student to see the course as a student sees it (I find it very handy to use that dummy student login - you can access all of my courses that way) - my courses are all in Modern Languages: Myth-Folklore, Indian Epics, World Literature.

Here's a screenshot - click on the image for a larger view.

[Laura Gibbs]

P.S. Regarding Google Calendar, here are the notes I will be sharing with my students about how to take advantage of that, subscribing to the class calendar that they see displayed in Desire2Learn, setting up notifications, etc.

Managing Your Google Calendars