UWM || Learning Technology Center || Technological Resources || D2L

Desire2Learn (D2L) Frequently Asked Questions

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 the fall 2004 UWM instructors were offering over 1,000 D2L websites for students in their courses. 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.

Here are the answers to some questions that are most frequently asked by faculty using Desire2Learn:

Why can't I see my classlist?

There are two reasons why an instructor might not be able to see the classlist for a specific course site.

First, when you go to your Classlist (usually in the upper middle of the navigation bar when you are in a course site), you will need to make sure that you have clicked on the tab marked "Students," since by default you will see the tab marked "Staff" first.

Second, if there is anything in the text box next to "Search for" the page will show only the results of that search. You must clear the Search for box and click on Search before you can see the full list of staff or students.

How do I add someone - a TA, a co-instructor, an interpreter - to my course site?

You can only add someone to your course site if s/he is in the D2L database. However, the D2L database includes everyone who is enrolled in a course (including the faculty who teach them), so the chances are pretty good you'll find whom you're looking for.

First, go to Classlist toward the upper middle of the navigation bar when you are in your course site.

Second, click on Add Participant.

Third, when the Lookup Participant screen comes up, put the participant's last name in the Search For text box and click on Search. If you know the ePanther username, this may work even better.

Fourth, when the list of participants with the name you are searching for comes up, click on the checkbox to the left of their name, then make sure that you click on the dropdown box to the right of their name to choose the correct Role. By default, you will be enrolling someone as a student, but if you want to enroll them instead as a TA or as an instructor, you must change the Role dropdown box to reflect that.

Finally, click on Enroll toward the lower right of your screen.

Please note: If your search finds no participants, it's possible that this participant is not in the D2L database and you will have to contact the LTC (LTC@uwm.edu) to add them to the database.

However, there are two things you should check before contacting the LTC:

1. Check to make sure that the person you are trying to add is not already in your classlist. If they are, then your search will not produce any results for that person.

2. Check the spelling of the name you are searching. Sometimes a partial text string (e.g., "anders" instead of "anderson" or "andersen" will produce results.

Why isn't my course site visible? Clicking on the plusses

To see a course that a user is enrolled in, s/he must "click on the plusses."

This means that when a user logs in to D2L at the start of a semester, there will be two plusses to click on before a course site is visible. One of these plusses is a "semester" or "term" folder; the other is a "department" or "program" folder.

First, click on the + sign in front of the semester or term (for instance, +Fall_04).

Second, click on the + sign in front of the department or program the course is in (for instance, +L&S-English).

A course title underlined in blue should be visible. If a user now clicks on the course title, s/he will be taken to the course site.

After a user has opened the term/semester and the department/program folder in a given semester, they will both remain open for the rest of the semester. Why can't I see the right-hand side of my navigation bar

Where can I locate a copy of the "first day handout?"

Click here!

The right-hand side of my navigation bar is off the screen, so I can't logout or get to Edit Course. How can I make it visible again?

Basically, there are three areas where you can change the amount of information on your screen. Any one of them can alter your view of the navigation bar.

1. If you have changed your local monitor display to be less than 1042 x 768, then this will make your print and icon much larger, but also reduce the amount of information displayed on your screen. So click on the Start button on the lower right of your screen, then on Control Panel, then on Display. Change the monitor display to 1042 x 768, and save it. Now you should be able to see the rest of your navigation bar.

2. If you see the titles on your navigation bar off-kilter, you probably need to change your browser text size by going (on the top menu of the browser control) to View, then to Text Size, then change it to Medium. This is very unlikely to have made the right-hand side of your menu bar disappear, but it may make it harder to see.

How do I copy course content from one D2L course site to another?

These instructions allow you to copy course content from an old D2L site in which you were an instructor to a new one. You cannot use these instructions if you want to copy Blackboard content into D2L. In that case, you need to contact the LTC instead. Please note also that you cannot copy users or user-related data from one site to another.

1. Go to your new D2L course site (i.e., the empty one), not the old D2L course site that you were using before.

2. On the lower right of the main navigation bar of your new course site, go to "Edit Course."

3. In the "Edit Course" view, click on "Components."

4. You will then see a screen that has at its top, "Copy course components." About midway down the screen you'll see a drop-down window that asks which old course site you want the components copied from. You should see in the drop-down list all of the D2L courses in which you are registered as an instructor. Pick the course.

5. Now you can just click the button below the drop-down list that says "check all" and copy everything from the old course site, or else you can select and click next to each of the types of items you want copied. Either way, scroll to the bottom of the screen and click on "Copy" to finish.

6. Note that if you want to copy "content" you must also copy the files associated with content, or else the content won't be linked!

7. Quicklinks, alas, do not copy (we've asked D2L to fix this).

8. Now click on "Go to Course" at the upper right of your screen. This will return you to the normal view of your course site. Please be certain that you check what you have copied to make sure that the copying produced the results you intended!

What are some best practices for managing the D2L gradebook?

1. You have to initialize the gradebook before you can use it. To do this, go to Grades, Grades Setup, Display Options (Save), Grade Schemes (Save), Grade Calculations (Save). You don’t have to make any changes in any of these area, but you have to Save on each of the three main screens.

2. We strongly recommend the use of the “Points System” instead of the “Weighted System” because of the drain on system resources in the latter system. You can select the Points system by going to the Grades Setup area à Grade Calculations and change the default from weighted to points, then Save.

3. In the Grade Calculations area, you should not choose to keep the final grade continuously updated. This will slow down your gradebook enormously and can even lock you out of it in larger classes.

4. We strongly recommend that you set up Groups for your gradebook, and always set the viewer display to Groups and to one specific group within that display. This will prevent a great deal of gradebook slowness or even lockout in larger classes.

5. If you choose the Points system, you can set up categories (e.g., tests, term papers, participation) and individual grade items within those categories without any difficulty. In the weighted system, the use of categories really slows everything down and can even result in your being locked out of the gradebook.

6. If you enter grades online, make sure that you Save often while you are doing so.

7. You have the option to enter grades offline if you wish, by exporting the grade item to Excel, then entering the grades and importing it again.

8. You should export your gradebook regularly to Excel simply as a backup.

9. When students have completed a D2L-graded quiz, you should probably go into the quiz area, then to the Grade Quiz icon (the little pencil), scroll to the bottom of the page, and click on Update. Once in a while grades don’t flow to the gradebook automatically, and this will ensure that grades are sent to the gradebook.

10. You should expect to access the gradebook early or late in the day or on weekends. Peak hours can be very slow. Always try to access the gradebook on a cable modem, DSL, or campus machine. Phone modems are not a good way to get access to the gradebook, especially in larger classes.

11. If you are going to drop the lowest grade in a category, you should wait to do so until the end of the semester. Doing this too early in the semester causes confusion and slows down the gradebook substantially.

12. Near the end of the semester you should go back to Grade Calculations and tell D2L to “Include Non-Graded Items in Final Calculated Grade and Final Adjusted Grade” or simply make sure that throughout the semester you enter a zero manually whenever a student does not hand in an assignment or take a test.

13. At the end of the semester you will need to click on the grade icon (the pencil) for the Final Grade item. Click on Recalculate All Final Grades and Save. Click on the checkbox next to the eyeball icon and Save again so the students can see their grades.

14. And finally: always use a calculator to check a few students’ grade calculations independently just to make sure that D2L is calculating their grades the way you expect it to!

Why can't I see my entire gradebook?

Sometimes when you click on Grades on the main navigation bar, you will see only your list of students and the first few grade items you've put there. This means that the page needs to be refreshed.

You can refresh the page by changing the dropdown box toward the left upper part of your screen (when you are in Grades) from Users to Groups and back again. That should display the entire gradebook successfully.

In the rare instance where you do not have any groups in your course site (for almost everyone, they are created automatically by the enrolment mapping process), the refresh process is a little more complicated: you first have to create a group (from the Classlist Manage Groups area), then go back to Grades and perform the dropdown box switch as indicated above. After that you can simply delete the group that was created if you wish. But this is a pretty unusual circumstance, we have found.

How can I change an answer after a quiz has been taken and get D2L to regrade all the students' results automatically?

Changing a question score after a quiz has been taken and having all student grades changed automatically

Please note that this procedure works with multiple choice and true/false questions, but apparently NOT with "ordering" questions.

1. Click on a quiz that has already been taken by your students and graded.

2. Choose Grade Quiz.

3. The default tab is Attempts. Instead, click on Question.

4. Each question in the quiz is listed. Clicking on a question brings you to the question with a summary of responses. Along with the summary is a list of versions of that question, so if the question changed, you see how people responded with each version.

5. Click on the little pencil stub icon for each version.

6. This allows you to "give to all attempts a certain point value" and "give to selected choices a certain point value."

This can be used to correct a problem with quiz scoring. For example, if you put a wrong answer in one of your quiz questions, D2L would have incorrectly marked a response "correct" when it was "incorrect." Using this method, you could go in to that old version and give all people who chose that option 0 points, instead of the full points they incorrectly earned, and vice versa.

What do I need to know to export/import the D2L gradebook to and from Excel?

Tips and tricks for Exporting to/Importing between the D2L Gradebook and Excel

1. Always use the "username" option when you are exporting your gradebook to Excel. NEVER use the student ID# option (even though it's the default). The reason is that when you put student ID#s into Excel, it automatically drops initial zeros in any student ID#, making it impossible to import your Excel file back into D2L.

2. Exporting the "out of" grade is the default, and it is usually the best choice. That is the grade you will be changing when you are in Excel.

3. If at all possible, export only one grade item, i.e., the one you are currently entering grades for. The process of importing will go much faster.

4. When you have entered your grades and are ready to import them to D2L, you should choose "Express Import" and NOT "Preview Import."

5. Despite its name, Express Import will take a fairly long time to complete in large classes. Don't worry; go out for a cup of coffee, and check your grades when you get back.

Why can't I save a file to my local computer when I am in Course Content?

When you click on a file in Content, unless it is an HTML file you should see a popup window that gives you a choice whether to Open or Save the file. If you don't see that popup window, and the file always Opens instead of Saving, you need to reset the default on your local workstation. This is not a D2L problem, but a Windows problem.

1. On your local computer, right-click on Start and then left-click on Explore. A Start Menu popup window will appear.

2. In the Start Menu popup window, click on Tools, and then on Folder Options.

3. Click on the File Types tab. There will be a short pause before the computer searches its memory to bring up all the file types that it recognizes. You'll see a little flashlight waving back and forth while it does this.

4. You now have to know what file type you are trying to open on the D2L site, since you have to know which file type extension to change your computer's settings for. The types of files are listed alphabetically. Some typical file types are as follows:

Word (= DOC)
Excel (= XLS)
PowerPoint (= PPT)
Text file (= TXT)
Rich Text file (= RTF)
WordPerfect (= WPD)
Works (= WPS)
Picture file (= JPG, JPEG, or GIF)

5. When you find the right file type, click on it, and then click on the "Advanced" button toward the lower right of the window. Then make sure that there is a check in the checkbox next to "Confirm open after download."

6. Now click "Ok" and then "Close," and close the Start Menu window.

Why won't my PowerPoint files open up in Course Content?

Some faculty have reported that they can't see (= "open") PowerPoint files that they have put in their course content area. We've been investigating this, and can report a few things, mostly reassuring:

1. It is probably not a D2L issue, but an Internet Explorer browser issue, and then only for a minority of workstations, e.g., it doesn't seem to happen in the Campus Computer Labs, or even on a significant proportion of privately owned computers.

2. It seems to be widespread, i.e., UW-System reports a similar problem.

3. In Netscape, it doesn't occur. You can open or save PowerPoint files if you are using Netscape as your browser.

4. In Internet Explorer, you can Save a PowerPoint file to your local computer, then open it from there. This is not a problem. This procedure is what UW-System recommends to its users. This seems reasonable, given that most people would save the file to their own computer anyhow.

5. In Internet Explorer, if you click on a PowerPoint file in the D2L Content area, and tell the file to Open rather than Save, you will sometimes get a blank screen within the D2L frame. If you then click on "Undock" you will be asked again whether you want to Save or Open the file, and if you choose to Open it, the file will appear.

We are continuing to investigate this problem to avoid the workaround in #5 above

What filetypes should I use for my D2L Content areas?

You can put just about any type of file on Desire2Learn for students to download, but there are some practical limitations to take into account, and also some “best practices” that we can recommend.

1. In order for students to look at the files you have put on your D2L site, they have to have a software program on their local computer that is capable of viewing it. This means, for instance, that if you are using Wordstar or Multimate as your word processor, your students will not be able to view those filetypes unless they also have Wordstar or Multimate on their local computer. The same is true for other types of files that are specific to a given software program, e.g., SPSS or Adobe Illustrator.

2. Most faculty on campus use Microsoft Office (Word, PowerPoint, Excel), since it is so ubiquitous on local machines and in the computer labs.

3. There are also some universal filetypes that will make life easier for your students.

a. Saving your file as a text file (.txt) makes it available for students to read with any word processor, but it loses your formatting in the process.
b. Saving a file as rich text format (.rtf) retains the formatting and makes the file available for viewing in any word processor.
c. Saving a file as a Web page (.htm or .html) means that it will be read directly by the students’ Web browsers.
d. Saving a file as an Adobe PDF (.pdf) file requires that you have Adobe Acrobat (not just the reader) installed on your local computer, but it is a standard filetype in many areas.

4. Some special tips:

a. If you are using a Mac, make sure that when you save your files, you add the “dot + 3” file extension, e.g., save the file as “filename.doc” and not just as “filename”.
b. If you are using Microsoft Works, you should not assume that it can be read by someone who is using Microsoft Office. Save a Works file as .txt or .rtf or .htm – or better yet, get MS Office on your local computer!
c. If you are using WordPerfect, make sure you save it as a Word file (or .txt or .rtf or .htm), since MS Office will not necessarily be able to read it.
d. It is generally better not to use unusual characters in the filename, such as ! or # or foreign language characters such as â é o – these may not be correctly interpreted by D2L.

5. If you are putting digitized video or audio files online, make sure that you let the students know whether they need a special plugin to view them. If so, you may want to include a link to the Web site where the plugin may be obtained.

6. If you want to display a picture, put it in .jpg or .gif format, since either will be read directly by the Web browser without any other special software required.

7. Finally, always take into account the size of the file you are putting online. Not all students have broadband access at home, and it takes a long time to download an 8 MB PowerPoint file on a phone modem!

Desire2Learn (D2L) Frequently Asked Questions

Access to the site for students, TAs, and co-instructors

Viewing the site

Course content files

Gradebook and quizzes