What’s New in D2L 9.1
Suzanne Baril
Overview
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What are the new features
What has been changed or fixed
What has been removed
Questions?
Course Home - old
Course Home - new
Course Home – Customizable Panel Sizes
Actually
Works
now.
Manage Content - old
Manage Content - new
Content Browser widget
• Gives
students fast
and easy
access to
course
content right
on a course's
homepage.
Manage Files
• Easier to copy and paste files
• Files and folder names can be edited in place
• HTML and TXT files can be edited directly with
a WYSIWYG editor
• Unicode filenames are supported
• Files can be previewed directly
Manage Files - old
Manage Files - new
Email notification for
Discussions tool
• You can now receive email notifications for
discussion forums.
• Can configure to send notifications immediately
when posted or as a daily digest.
• User profile pictures will display next to each
message.
• When grading within a discussion, you can now
enter feedback as well as a score.
HTML Editor
• Adding URLs is easier. (not evident)
• The same editor is used across browsers and
regardless of Mac and Windows operating
systems.
• Both LaTeX and MathML are options in the
equation editor.
"Insert Stuff" button.
• Replaces the "Insert Object" button in the
advanced content editor, allows embedding of
media, such as YouTube and Flickr videos, by
simply entering the URL or by using HTML
embed code.
Insert images via URL
• Users can now add an image within the HTML
Editor by entering the image’s URL.
• Be cautious of copyright issues with this feature
and bandwidth theft.
“Saved Successfully" message.
• The "Saved Successfully" message, as well as
other status messages now appear at the bottom
corner of the screen.
• These messages will disappear after a bit or you
can close (x) with a click.
Accessibility improvements.
• Changes to tables and layouts to improve screen
reader performance
• Keyboard-accessible spellchecker
• Improved HTML tagging of headings to improve
screen reader navigation
• Improvement of tabbing functionality to be
more consistent with desktop applications.
Classlist and user reports.
• The Classlist now shows the date when someone
last accessed the course, not the entire system.
• Classlist Withdrawals Report will include direct
access to User Progress.
• View Progress is now available from the
gradebook and when selected, you will see all the
feedback/comments you have left for the
student.
Manage Dates
• Now you can quickly view and change availability
dates for your course objects in one central
location.
• Can offset the dates
for a entire series of
items.
• Useful when you copy
a course from one
term to the next
Export and Import Course Components
• The system now exports and imports navigation
bar templates.
Copy Course Components
• When you copy course components, the system
now also copies activities for competencies.
Course Builder
• Drag and drop modules and
placeholders to create your
course structure.
• This enables you to plan out your
lectures, discussion topics,
assignments, tests, and other
course activities before you
actually start creating them.
• You can even copy and paste
your structures to quickly build
your course shell.
Course Builder
• Create learning objects by
dragging them onto the
Course Builder canvas.
• When you select any
object, click Edit
Placeholder to manage the
object's display name in
View Content and add
notes to help you manage
your course building tasks.
Course Builder
• Create and associate course
learning objectives and
grades by dragging them onto
applicable objects (quizzes,
discussion topics, or dropbox
folders).
• You can then browse all of
your assessments and view all
their associated objects to
easily manage an objectivebased course.
Course Builder
Intelligent Agents
• Intelligent Agent is a feature that monitors a
class to find activity that matches certain criteria
that you set. For example:
▫ You can use intelligent agents to e-mail users
whose grades are below a certain level,
▫ Check for users that have not logged in within a
specific number of days
▫ Check for users that view a specific content topic.
Minimal “Look and Feel” changes.
• Some modest aesthetic changes have been made
to the default course navbar and homepage.
• We will try to keep it looking as much the same
as possible.
Mobile web compatibility.
• Allows course content, grades, and calendar on
iPhone, BlackBerry, and Android-based
smartphones. Version 9.2 will be better.
DEMO videos
• http://www.desire2learn.com/learningenviron
ment/highered/coursemanagement/