Workshops
Desire2Learn (D2L)
Hybrid/Blended Courses
Fully Online Courses
Workshops
Individual Consulting
Media Lab Resources
Faculty Development Programs
Desire2Learn (D2L)
PowerPoint
Image Scanning
Video Editing
Technology Enhanced Courses
Hybrid/Blended Courses
Fully Online Courses
Staff Information
Mission/History of the LTC
Partners
Projects
Contact IMT
Contact LTC
Desire2Learn (D2L)
The LTC staff provides consulting, training, and support for Desire2Learn (D2L), the course management system used by all UW campuses, for UWM faculty and teaching staff. Desire2Learn makes it easy for instructors to develop course Web sites for web-enhanced, hybrid and totally online courses. D2L lets the instructor put course content online, create online quizzes, develop on-line discussion groups, develop Web links, and maintain course grades online. In Fall 2006 UWM instructors more than 2400 course sections had D2L Web sites. Stop by the LTC to learn more about incorporating D2L into your courses or to see examples of D2L web course sites developed by your colleagues. Another first step to learning D2L is to register for one of the LTC's free workshops.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ's)
Announcements
October 12th, 2006: Using eGrading to get grades from D2L into PAWS
Folks, we've decided to continue expanding the eGrading pilot initiative for the Fall semester.
First, please note that every instructor who was accepted and trained in last year's eGrading pilot cohort will automatically be included as an authorized eGrader this Fall. You don't need to contact us at all; we've got a list.
Second, if you were NOT in the previous eGrading pilot and you wish to participate this Fall, please email LTC@uwm.edu to let us know. As before, our first priority will be instructors who have large lecture classes, i.e., lectures with 80 or more students enrolled.
**The limit for the Fall 2007 cohort is 50 additional instructors who have not previously used eGrading.**
Third, in order for us to include you as an authorized eGrader, you MUST sign up for and complete our one-hour eGrading workshop. If you do not take the workshop, you will not be able to use eGrading at the end of the semester. The eGrading workshops are on the MyDev calendar now starting in November . You can find the specific dates and times for these eGrading workshops and enroll online by going to http://LTC.uwm.edu and clicking on "Workshops" on the left-hand navigation bar.
best, Alan
September 29th, 2006: Filename conventions in D2L
Folks, both you and your students upload files to D2L, e.g., files are uploaded as content, as assignments to the Dropbox, as attachments to discussion forum postings or announcements. However, if you use certain "bad' characters in your filenames (and sometimes in folder names as well), D2L may not be able to construe the pathname after the file has been uploaded. Whoever tries to get access to that file may get an error message, and the file will then be irretrievable.
This is not new behavior on D2L's part -- it's just one of those annoying little idiosyncracies that we eventually become more or less accustomed to in any course management system, sort of like a familiar but slightly dysfunctional pet.
In general, filenames should NOT include ampersands, pound signs, apostrophes, exclamation marks, percent signs, asterisks, or diacritical marks like accents or umlauts or cedillas. Spaces between words are ok, but dashes or underscores are better. In short, stick to English natural language characters and you and your students will be ok.
regards, Alan
Downtime January 9th-10th
D2L will be completely unavailable, due to scheduled maintenance,
- beginning 9:30 p.m. on Monday, January 9
- until noon on Tuesday, January 10
We regret any inconvenience occasioned by this downtime.
Getting Ready for Spring
Hi folks, I'm just sending you answers to the five questions that are most often asked at the start of every semester. Please read them and save yourselves some time!
1. How do I request a D2L course site? Click Here!
2. How do I know when my course site is ready? Login to D2L and *make sure* that you click on the "+" in front of Spring 2006. Then click on the "+" in front of your Dept, e.g., L&S-Anthropology.
3. How do I copy content from an old D2L site to a new one? Click on this link.
4. How do I add a TA or co-instructor to my course site (enrolled students are added automatically)? Click on this link for instructions: Click Here!
HINT: when adding a user, the ePanther/Alpha username is typically the best info to use for your search in the D2L database!
5. Where can I get a copy of the first day handout? Click Here!
best, Alan
We're back! May 25, 2005: D2L is Live!
Folks, due to the extraordinary diligence of technical and support staff at both UW-Madison and UWM, we are pleased to let you know that D2L is now available again, considerably ahead of schedule! The UWM instance of D2L is now being hosted by the central UWS D2L utility, Learn@UW.
You will use the same ePanther username and password as you did before the move. And as before, faculty will contact the UWM LTC for help, and students will contact the UWM Help desk.
D2L may be accessed via the UWM home page as previously, or you may type in http://D2L.uwm.edu to get there. [Please note that this Web address will redirect you to our new "formal" address, http://uwm.courses.wisconsin.edu.] We will shortly send out additional information about getting to D2L via the new UWM portal that will be available for everyone by Fall 05.
May 23-26, 2005 - Scheduled Downtime for Move to Learn@UW (UW System D2L Utility @ Madison)
After the end of the Spring 05 semester, Desire2Learn will be hosted by Learn@UW, the UW System D2L utility based in Madison. In the past, UWM hosted its own D2L, but we are making this move for reasons of cost-savings and greater efficiency. As well, we look forward to future opportunities for online collaboration with the other institutions in the UW-System.
There will be NO change at all in the services provided by the UWM Learning Technology Center (LTC) and by the Campus Solutions Center (Help desk). Those services will continue to be provided on the UWM campus, just as they are now. Thus we expect this move to be relatively straightforward, and we are trying to make the move transparent to faculty to the extent possible.
There's no really *best* time to make the move, because we're always either wrapping up a previous semester or starting a new one. We know that D2L will have to be down for four days near the end of May when the move takes place. This will cause some inconvenience for faculty and students in the first summer session, but we are hoping that by giving everyone considerable lead time with this notice, courses and course sites can be adjusted accordingly.
Right now our scheduled downtime is 23-26 May, inclusive. More precisely, we expect that D2L will be completely unavailable from 12:01 a.m. on Monday, 23 May through 11:59 p.m. on Thursday, 26 May. As the date draws nearer I will write you again to confirm these dates and times.
If you have any questions or concerns about the planned move, please do not hesitate to contact Bob Kaleta, Director of the LTC (kaleta@uwm.edu).
Update
Please remember that D2L will be completely unavailable from 23-26 May inclusive. Please let your students know. There will also be an announcement to this effect on the login screen at D2L.uwm.edu.
Since you may still be submitting grades during that period, please make SURE that you export your gradebook to Excel right after classes end, and that you download anything else you need from your D2L course site (e.g., dropbox files, discussion forum postings) to calculate your final grades.
We apologize for the inconvenience. As I said before, there's no good time to take down the system for our move to Learn@UW in Madison. The least worst time we could find was after exams had been completed for the Spring and before the first 6-week term in the Summer.
April 28, 2005 - 2003 and 2004 Courses Made Unavailable
D2L ran a process today that temporarily inactivated D2L courses from 2003 and 2004. Faculty can still see these courses, but students cannot.
If for some reason you need your students to be able to view a specific course *prior* to 2005 -- e.g., Fall or Spring 2004 -- just go to Edit Course on the course Web site, then change the radio button next to "Active?" from 'no' to 'yes' and Save Changes. You don't need to do anything with the dates you see on that screen; they are irrelevant.
If you have any difficulty making a specific course active. please let us know. We apologize for any inconvenience: it caught us by surprise too!
April 15, 2005 - Important Tips in Creating and Administering Surveys
If you intend to use the D2L survey tool for your course evals, you MUST be careful not to run afoul of the survey tool's quirks -- and we've just discovered a new one!
If you set up a D2L survey for your students to take, you must NOT make any changes to the survey after students have begun to respond. Let me be emphatic: do NOT make any change to the survey after students start to take it!
The problem is that every time there is a change to the survey questions, no matter how trivial, the survey data are accumulated afresh for purposes of any report -- aggregate or individual -- that you create.
So if 6 students take your survey and you then correct a misspelling in one of the questions, D2L starts collecting data from scratch when the 7th student takes the corrected survey, and all data from the 6 students who took it previously are excluded from the report. The original survey responses for those students are still accessible (*UNLESS* you've made them anonymous, when they're not accessible at all!), but they would have to be accessed one by one for manual tabulation of data, which is incredibly awkward.
We've seen something very similar, by the way, in the way quiz stats are generated after a change to a quiz. But the survey report issue is much more immediate at this point in the semester.
April 11, 2005 - Grades by Student D2L "Bug" Fixed
You no longer must edit grades by item (rather than by student) by clicking on the pencil icon 
to the right of the grade item name found in the gradebook. A patch was applied to correct the "grade by user" function. You can now enter grades by item or by user.
January, 2005 - D2L Gradebook Advice for "Large" Gradebooks
Following our experience with the D2L gradebook last semester, we'd like to call your attention to some things that can make your life easier.
If you have a large Desire2Learn (D2L) gradebook, you may encounter difficulties because of the substantial resources that it requires to calculate and display your grades when you try to view or edit it. I am defining a "large" gradebook here as one that has more than 100 students and/or more than 20 grade items.
We urge those who have large gradebooks to come and meet with one of the LTC staff face-to-face to get some help with the gradebook right at the start of the semester. That way you can avoid problems after the semester has begun.
Just for your immediate information, however, there are several tricks you can use to reduce the strain on a *large* gradebook. Here are five of the most effective ones:
1. Use the "Points" system rather than the "Weights" system.
2. Do NOT keep your final grade continuously updated. 3. Make sure that your classlist is set up by "Groups," and that your gradebook is told to display the class one group at a time.
4. Learn to use the import/export feature of the gradebook so that you can enter grades offline using Excel.
5. Try to access your gradebook during off-peak hours and days, i.e., any time OTHER than 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., Monday through Friday.
If you have questions, please contact us to set up an appointment or simply attend one of our drop-in sessions on Monday at 9:30 - 11:00, Thursday at 1:30 - 3:00.