The Course Administration area is a central area for accessing tools related to setting up and managing your course. From the Course Administration area or widget, you can access many tools to help you run your course smoothly.
Click Edit Course on your navbar, or access the course administration tool you want to use directly by selecting its link in the Course Administration widget.
You can edit the properties of your course offering from the Course Offering Information page.
Do one of the following:
You can enhance the appearance of your course and help users identify your course more easily by modifying the colors used in the interface. Learning Environment uses three color settings to render the areas within a course.
Course tools, such as Quizzes, Content, Discussions, Chat, Grades, etc., are course components that you add to your course offering to share learning content, foster interaction, and evaluate performance. You can turn course tools on and off so that the tools available in your course are specifically tailored to your pedagogy and course materials. You can also rename tools.
Do one of the following:
Before disabling a tool, be aware of the following:
On the Tool Status page, activate a tool by toggling its Status to On. Toggle its Status to Off to deactivate the tool.
Renaming a tool changes the wording used in the navbar. You may want to rename a tool if your organization or geographic area is more familiar with different terminology.
Note Changing the Custom Navbar Name for a tool does not replace all uses of the original term throughout the system. It only changes the display name for the tool on the navbar. To replace all references to a specific term, a site administrator needs to update your organization’s language pack using the Manage Languages tool.
If your organization supports multiple locales, you can change the default locale used for your course offering by selecting a different locale from the Locale drop-down list on the Course Offering Information page.
Normally users can specify their own locale within their preferences. If you want to override their locale preference so that all users see the same locale in your course, select the Force Locale check box. You might use this if you are teaching a language immersion course and want all the cultural formatting and text in the course offering to reflect the language you are teaching.
The copy components utility lets you copy quizzes, content, grade items, discussion forums, dropbox folders, and nearly every other type of component from another course offering or a course offering’s parent template. Copying components saves you from having to recreate your course’s resources from scratch and can significantly reduce the amount of work required to create or re-offer a course.
You can use the copy components feature to:
To copy components between course offerings, you must be enrolled in both offerings. (If you want to copy components from a peer’s course offering, ask that user to enroll you). You also need to be enrolled in and have access to the parent template to copy components from it into a course offering.
You can also copy components into a course template, and you can create standard components within a template and then copy them into the template’s associated course offerings.
The only components you might overwrite are course files. Course files are overwritten if one of the files being copied has the same name as an existing file. No other components are overwritten.
For example, if you have three checklists in your current course offering, and copy two checklists from another offering, you will now have a total of five checklists in the current offering. This is true even if the components are identical. If you are copying components from the same source multiple times, be careful not to copy the same items more than once or you will create duplicates.
User data is not copied. For example, if you copy the discussions component, only the forums and topics are copied, not the posts inside the topics. Similarly, if you copy dropbox folders, user submissions are not be copied; if you copy quizzes, user attempts are not be copied, etc.
Tip We recommend that you Copy All Components between courses to ensure you maintain all desired associations, and then delete any undesired material in the new course.
If you are copying linked or associated components, you must copy all of the related components at the same time. For example, if a discussion topic has release conditions based on the results of a quiz, you must copy all three components—discussions, quizzes, and release conditions—at the same time. Similarly, if you have a quiz that is associated with a grade item, be sure to copy both the quiz and the grade item at the same time. As long as the associated components are copied together, links between them are retained.
Note To copy release conditions, you must select the Release Conditions component.
Component | Notes |
---|---|
Competencies | Competencies, learning objectives, and associated activities are copied. |
Content | Does not include Files or Content Display Settings; these must be selected as separate components. Be sure to copy all "Course Files" used in the course as well as the content topics or only the Content topic structure will be copied. |
Checklists | Due dates for checklist items are not changed when you copy them. |
Groups and Sections | Auto-enrollments are not run in the new course. You must enroll users yourself. |
Navigation Bars | Tool Display Names must also be copied if you have modified the names of tools. |
Release Conditions | The only release conditions that are copied are ones that are attached to and reference other components that are copied at the same time. For instance, if a quiz has a release condition attached that refers to a content topic, it is only copied if both the quiz and the content topic are copied at the same time. Choosing Release Conditions without selecting any other component does nothing. |
Tip We recommend that you Copy All Components between courses to ensure you maintain all desired associations, and then delete any undesired material in the new course.
Note To see details for course components, click the Show the current course components link, then click the View Detail icon beside a component to see existing items.
The following table provides a list of learning management systems (LMS) and content providers that you can import course content from. It is recommended that you work with your site administration or Desire2Learn Account Manager when importing content from another LMS.
Component | IMSCP version | QTI version |
---|---|---|
Blackboard 6.0 | 1.1.2 | 1.2.1 |
Blackboard 6.1.5 | 1.1.3 | 1.2.1 |
Blackboard 6.2 | 1.1.3 | 1.2.1 |
Blackboard 6.3 | 1.1.3 | 1.2.1 |
Common Cartridge 1.0 | 1.1.3 | 1.2.1 |
WebCT CMU 1.x | 1.1.2 | 1.2.1 |
WebCT CMU 2.0 | 1.1.3 | 1.2.1 |
Respondus 2.0 | N/A | 1.2.1 |
Respondus 3.x | N/A | 1.2.1 |
SCORM 1.2 | 1.1.2 | N/A |
SCORM 1.3 (2004) | 1.1.3 | N/A |
Angel 6.1 | 1.1.2 | N/A |
UCompass 1.0 | Does not follow IMSCP standard. | Does not follow a QTI specification. |
Desire2Learn 8.x | 1.1.3 | 1.2.1 |
You can convert packages into importable Desire2Learn-formatted packages using separate conversion tools. Work with your Desire2Learn Account Manager to discuss converting and importing from the following systems:
You can import components created in other learning managements systems, provided by content vendors, or created in a content creation program (like Respondus). To import components, you must have a file containing the components in a format supported by the Import tool.
For assistance creating an export file from another software package, see the user documentation provided with that software, or contact your site administration if you need further assistance.
Tip You can also import components from the Learning Object Repository (LOR).
Note Not all components have sub-items.
Note If course components with the same name as the course components you are importing already exist in the course, you will end up with multiple course components with the same name. Likewise, if you import multiple files that contain course components with the same name, you will have duplicates. For example, if your course contains a discussion topic called "Exam Review" and you import a course package that contains a discussion topic called "Exam Review," your course will contain two topics called "Exam Review."
You can export components from your course offering to a file. This allows you to reuse these components in another learning management system, including another Desire2Learn Learning Environment, or to store the components and then re-import them into another course offering or template at a later date.
Components are exported to an IMSCP-compliant zip file, a standard file format based on the IMS Content Packaging specification, meaning you should be able to reuse these components in any learning management system that supports this format.
You can export course components from the organization level, except for files in the Organization or Shared files areas.
User data is not exported. For example, if you export the dropbox folders component, none of submissions to the folders are exported. Similarly, if you export the discussions component, posts inside the discussions topics will not be exported.
Associations between components will not be exported. The IMS Content Packaging specification, which the format for export files is based on, does not support these associations (for example, Quicklinks, links to grade items, release conditions, etc.).
Note Not all components have sub-items.
Note If you do not download the file from this screen, it is lost. You cannot download it later.
The following components can be exported:
The IMS Common Cartridge standard allows publishers and content providers to create platform-independent packages of resources (content, assessments, question libraries, discussions, etc.) building on existing IMS content and QTI quizzing packaging standards. Package creators can optionally protect the package, requiring users to authenticate with the creator using web services before importing or accessing protected resources. Common Cartridge was designed to provide a standard way to package and protect content, as opposed to each publisher or each learning management system creating a proprietary method of protection and enforcement.
Note For more detailed information on the Common Cartridge project and its role in the Digital Learning Connection, visit the IMS Global Learning Consortium website (http://imsglobal.org [20]).
You can import Common Cartridge packages and expand your course offerings to include a wide range of innovative, platform-independent, and diverse course content from publishers and content providers.
Importing a Common Cartridge package follows the same process as importing other files of supported import formats. Importing a cartridge automatically creates the applicable content, quizzes, questions, etc. in the Learning Environment and makes them immediately available for use. Package creators have the option of protecting cartridges on import or forcing the user to enter an access code at the beginning of the import process.
Any protected resource that imports from a Common Cartridge package displays a Protected icon beside it. When users first try to access a protected resource, they are prompted for an access code, which is distributed by the package creator. Entering the access code and accepting the license agreement initiates the electronic authorization with the package creator’s authorization web service and unlocks the resource for the user.
The user will not be prompted to enter their access code when accessing additional protected content from the package until the authorization period ends. The length of the authorization period is determined by the package creator and changes from one package to another. If a course contains protected resources from multiple packages, users will typically be prompted for authorization only once per protected package.
Note Protected resources can be copied between courses, but cannot be exported from Learning Environment.
Use the Mobile Brand Administration page to customize the look and feel of your institution's Mobile Web interface. You can customize the colors and logo in the interface to match your organization's branding or modify the appearance of titles and headings to help users identify courses more easily.
Customizing branding at the organization level establishes the default settings for the org and all org units; child org units do not receive default settings from their parent org units. If you customize any setting at the org unit level, all settings become custom to that org unit. This means that future changes to the organization branding will not transfer or overwrite settings in an org unit with custom branding (unless you restore defaults).
To access an org unit level branding page, do one of the following:
Depending on whether you access the Mobile Brand Administration page from the organization or org unit level, you may not have access to all settings.
Note The Mobile Web navbar does not reproduce settings from the Navbar tool.
Links:
[1] http://staging.docs.d2l/en/accessing-course-administration
[2] http://staging.docs.d2l/en/accessing-course-offering-information-page
[3] http://staging.docs.d2l/en/editing-course-colors
[4] http://staging.docs.d2l/en/setting-up-course-tools
[5] http://staging.docs.d2l/en/renaming-tool-in-course-offering
[6] http://staging.docs.d2l/en/editing-course-locale
[7] http://staging.docs.d2l/en/copying-course-components-between-org-units
[8] http://staging.docs.d2l/en/course-import-capability
[9] http://staging.docs.d2l/en/importing-course-components-from-file
[10] http://staging.docs.d2l/en/exporting-course-components
[11] http://staging.docs.d2l/en/exportable-components
[12] http://staging.docs.d2l/en/ims-common-cartridge
[13] http://staging.docs.d2l/en/importing-common-cartridge-packages
[14] http://staging.docs.d2l/en/how-are-protected-common-cartridge-resources-handled
[15] http://staging.docs.d2l/en/mobile-brand-administration
[16] http://staging.docs.d2l/en/accessing-mobile-brand-administration-page
[17] http://staging.docs.d2l/en/mobile-branding-reference-sheet
[18] http://staging.docs.d2l/en/taxonomy/term/2
[19] http://staging.docs.d2l/en/Learning%20Repository
[20] http://imsglobal.org