CETL Blog

On September 5, I announced the new Annotation Tool in the Assignments tool in D2L . And today, I wanted to give you some additional notes about this tool, because of some questions that have come up for us from faculty.

First, the Annotation tool, which is enabled by default, can be disabled for specific assignments.  To do this:

1. Click the down arrow next to the assignment you want to edit, and select Edit Folder.
2. Scroll down to the bottom of the Properties tab to Annotation Tools, and deselect “Make annotation tools available for assessment”. Then click Save and Close.

   

Second, I wanted to mention the difference between downloading the annotated version (PDF version) and downloading the original document when assessing assignment submissions. Note that this is for file submissions when the Annotation tool is enabled.

1. Click the down arrow next to the assignment you want to grade, and click View Submissions.
2. Click on the Evaluate link for the student’s assignment you want to assess.
3. To download the document itself, click the arrow next to the assignment link, and select Download.

   

4. To view and download the Annotated file (as a PDF), click on the document link to open the Annotation tool, add your annotations, then click Download.

   

5. To close the Annotations tool window and return to the original view, where you can download the assignment document itself, click the X above, on the right side, of the Annotation window.

   

Stay tuned next Monday where I will tell you about a few new updates regarding the connection between the Assignments and Discussions tools, and the Grades tool.

This tutorial is designed for faculty who have previous experience using the various tools in D2L, and will cover the steps involved when you want to put your students into groups in D2L.

Using Groups means that you can release tools, activities, and content to specific groups of students, for example, Assignment folders which would be accessible only by a group of students, or modules of content which only specific groups of students can view. For further information, please contact desupport@camosun.ca for assistance.

Steps

1. Go to the Groups tool in your course. If you don’t see Groups in your My Tools drop-down, you can find it by going to Edit Course.
2. Click New Category. A Category will contain the groups you will put your students into. For example, Assignment 1 Groups might be your Category, then you will have several Groups within that category into which you will enrol students.
3. Give your Category a Category Name (e.g., Assignment 1 Groups).
4. Scroll down and select your Enrolment Type. Here are the choices:
   1. # of Groups – No Auto Enrolments – Use this when YOU want to enrol students into specific groups yourself
   2. Groups of # – Use when you know how many students you want in each group, but you want D2L to automatically enrol them
   3. # of Groups – Use when you know how many groups you want, but you want D2L to automatically enrol students into them
   4. Groups of # – Self Enrolment – Use when you know how many students you want in each group, but you want students to self-select which group they want to be in. (Self-enrolment can also be given an Expiry Date, after which remaining students will be auto-enrolled into empty group spaces),
   5. # of Groups – Self Enrolment – Use when you know how many groups you want, but you want students to self-select which group they want to be in
   6. # of Groups, Capacity of # – Self Enrolment – Use when you know how many groups you want AND how many students you want in each group, but you want students to self-select which group they want to be in
   7. Single user, member-specific groups – Use when you want to create groups of ONE (this is great if you want to provide students with Discussion forum space for personal journaling – so they can post journal entries that only you can see).Fill in the required boxes for whichever enrolment type you chose (e.g., Number of Groups, Number of Users), then select which tools/workspaces you would like to automatically create as you create your groups (note that you can connect tools/activities/content to groups AFTER you have created them as well). Then click Save.

      

5. Follow the instructions for creating the additional tools (Discussion, Locker, Assignments) if you have selected them, clicking Create and Next as you go. When you are finished, click Done.
6. Finally, click Save.

Things to Remember

Note that if you have created self-enrolment groups, you will not be able to use View as Student to see what this looks like to your students – you need to be a registered student in the course to see how the process works. However, we have created a handoutfor students on Self Enrolling into Groups that you can find in the On-Demand Training course in D2L look at, or point students to in the D2L Student Guide.

This content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence.Icons by the Noun Project.

There is a new tool to help you with giving feedback to students in submitted Assignments. When students submit WORD docs, PDF files, EXCEL spreadsheets, or images as Assignment submissions, you can add comments, and other markups right on the file in D2L.

This tool is especially handy for short assignments where commenting is minimal (rather than using the feedback box and referring back to the document). For longer assignments, we would still recommend you download them and provide feedback using track changes and commenting.

Here’s how it works:

1. Go to the Assignments tool, and click on the title of the assignment you want to grade. Note that to use the annotation tool, the assignment must be a File submission type (i.e., not a Text submission type).
2. Click on an assessment document to open the Evaluate Submission
3. You will see a notice “Document conversion is in process”.
4. Then the document will open in the annotation tool.
5. First we will look at the annotation tools on the left side of the annotation toolbar, from left to right:
   1. Document view: Thumbnails (the default), Outline (opens a table of contents for multi-page documents), Bookmarks (allows you to bookmark pages so you can quickly navigate back to them)
   2. Page forward and back (if you have a multi-page document to grade)
   3. Page Layout: Page Mode (Single page, Double page, Automatic); Page Transition (Continuous – gives you a scroll bar, Jump – move from page to page using the table of contents); Page Rotation (Rotate Right, Rotate Left) – play around and choose the layout that works best for you.
   4. Pan Mode (allows you to drag the page up and down)
   5. Zoom Out and Zoom In
   6. Fit Page (fits the document page to the annotation tool window)
6. Now, the tools on the right side of the annotation toolbar, from left to right:
   1. Pen, Highlighter, reverse Highlighter, Eraser
   2. Note tool (add comments to locations in the document)
   3. Text box tool
   4. Line, Arrow, Rectangle (underline and point things out in the document)
   5. Print
   6. Search Document
   7. Download
   8. Toggle Fullscreen
      The Note tool opens another toolbar which includes options to change the Note colour, shape, and icon style.

      
      The Text box tool opens another toolbar which includes options to format the text (size, colour, font), and align it top, centre, or bottom.

      

7. As you add annotation to the document (e.g., using arrows, text boxes, notes, etc.) they will appear on the document.

   

8. Click Save Draft if you need to go back to finish annotations (or if you will be marking several students and want to publish all feedback at once). Finish grading the assignment as you normally would, adding the Score, or using a Rubric, then click Publish to publish the annotated feedback to students.

   

Students can download annotated feedback file as a PDF (would have to actually rewrite the file if they were submitting a rewrite, not just accept changes).

Here’s what the annotated file looks like to a student (once they have gone to the Assignments tool and clicked the Feedback: Unread link:

1. Students click View Inline Feedback.

   

2. Students can view the feedback, and Print or Download it (it will save as a PDF file).

   

Things to Remember

Re students using screen readers to access online content: The images placed on documents using the annotation tool are NOT tagged, therefore screen readers DO NOT read them. We advise that you not use the annotation tool for submissions from students who require screen reader technology to access their online course content.

This tutorial will cover the steps involved when you wish to have notifications about course activities (news additions/updates, new content, dropbox feedback, etc.) sent to your personal email or to your mobile device. Make sure to do this if you are not logging into D2L regularly so you don’t miss any important information posted by your instructor! For further information, please contact desupport@camosun.ca for assistance.

Steps

1. Log into D2L.
2. Click on your name to open your personal drop-down menu, and select Notifications.

   

3. To set up email notifications, click Enable email notifications. Then in the pop-up box, select Use custom email, enter your personal email, and click Save.

   

4. To set up mobile notifications, click Register your mobile. Then in the pop-up box, select your Country, Mobile Carrier, and enter your Mobile Number. Click Save.

   

5. Scroll down to the Instant Notifications section, and select the notifications you would like to receive, and how you would like to receive them. Note that you can also go to the Exclude Some Courses section to prevent receiving notifications from selected courses. Click Save when you have finished.

   

Things to Remember

You can return to Notifications at any time to make changes to your settings. Note that you will receive notifications for ALL courses you are registered in unless you choose to Exclude Some Courses.