Faculty Tips o' the Week
By popular demand! You've asked that we archive and make available Faculty Tips o' the Week. These tips, from the Faculty Tip o' the Week widget on your D2L homepage, are now available right here! Keep your eye out for fresh weekly tips on D2L.
Archiving Assignment Submissions with Box
Assignments and Group Discussion Changes
D2L on your Mobile with Brightspace Pulse
Keeping Students on Track with Due Dates
Plagiarism Checking and Markup with TurnItIn
Adding to the My Courses List
My Courses is no longer sorted by College or semester. Current courses should automatically be on your list. Adding others is done by "pinning them". Here's how:
Click the square menu button near the top 
to open the "Select a Course" list
To filter this list you can enter a partial course name or year. Generalized search terms are recommended
Click the "pin" icon 
to the right of the course name to pin it. It will darken to indicate it is pinned
For more information, you can watch the video on course pinning here.
Archiving Assignment Submissions with Box
If you want your current assignment submissions to be easily accessible in future semesters, you can archive them in Box. To store them, here are the steps:
- From Assignments, download your submissions by checking the boxes to the left of them and clicking Download
- Click the link to the "zip" file to save it to your computer.
- Login to Box using your msubillings.edu email address
- Create a folder with the name of your class if needed, then drag and drop the file into the file area or folder on the box web site
Assignments and Group Discussion Changes
The Assignments and Group Discussions have changed a little with our latest version of D2L:
- When creating new Assignment folders, they are hidden (draft) by default, click the down arrow next to the folder name and choose "Make Visible" to show them to students or change them to "Published" if they are also in Content.
- Group Discussions no longer require separate topics for each group. When creating a new Topic choose "Group or section topic" and the group category. This can only be done when first creating it.
Creating and Using Groups
You can create and apply groups to your course in D2L for use in Discussions and Assignments. Here's how to get started:
- Go to Course Admin, then Groups
- Click New Category, enter a name, specify the number of groups you want and click Save
- To enroll users, click the down arrow next to your category below and choose "Enroll"
- Select the students you would like to put into each group
Watch the video for more details and information on creating group discussions and assignments
Creating your Gradebook
When developing a course for a new semester, you can save time by creating or updating your gradebook and releasing the "up-to-now" grades first. By default, D2L does not show students their percentage until you release it. To configure your grading system and release the grades, here are the steps:
- Go to the Grades, Setup Wizard, and click Start to set up your grading system
- On Step 2 check "Final Calculated Grade" and on Step 6 check "Grade Scheme Symbol". Finish the wizard.
- Go to Enter Grades, click the down arrow next to "Final Calculated Grade" and choose Grade All.
- Check all boxes in the column "Release Final Calculated Grade" and click Save.
- You can now also go to Grades, Settings, Calculation Options and check "Automatically Release.." from the start, and Grades will be automatically released as soon as there is a new score entered for any item.
D2L on your Mobile with Brightspace Pulse
Pulse can help your students keep up with your course on the go. It can show most course content, subscribed Discussions, and events from their Calendar. Here are a few guidelines to getting the info you need to students:
- Check the Show in Calendar box for dates on Quizzes and Discussions
- Due Dates are shown in the Brightspace Pulse App, available for iPhone, iPad, and Android
- New dates added to your course activities should show up right away
Dates and the Calendar
You can add important dates that will show on students' calendar for your course, even if they are not connected to an assignment or other course component. To do so:
- On Course Home, click the down arrow next to Calendar and choose Go to Calendar
- Click Create Event
- Enter a title OR click Add Content (NOTE: this does not set a due date, it provides a link from their calendar).
- Enter a date below and click Save
How Students View Feedback
Viewing feedback is a little different for each type of coursework, here's how students can access it:
- Assignments: From Content, click the Assignment and choose View Inline Feedback near the bottom. From Assignments, click Feedback:Read/Unread to the right of the Assignment name. If there is a paper markup directly in D2L or
in Turnitin
, choose View Inline Feedback or View Turnitin Grademark to read it.
- Quizzes or Exams: Students will go to Quizzes. They click On Attempt next to the one they would like to see. Choose Attempt [#]. Overall feedback will be at the top. If an individual question has feedback, students
will have a "View Feedback" button under it. NOTE: The student view of their submission
is set by you. The default is score only, and can be changed by going to Edit Quiz, the Submission
Views tab, and choosing Add Additional View.
- Items scored by Rubrics: For items that have Rubrics, students can usually go to Grades and click "Assessment
details" to see how your scored on each criterion. The Rubric may also be visible
in the activity itself, in the feedback areas mentioned above.
Keeping Students on Track with Due Dates
You can pace your course and ensure timely completion of assignments by adding a due date. Due dates put a reminder on your students' calendar as well as generating an alert notification. Here are a few ways to assign dates to course components:
- If any course component that has an option to "Show in Calendar" make sure it is checked!
- For Assignments, check the boxes next to each one you would like to change and click Bulk Edit
- For Quizzes, click on the name of Quiz and go to the Restrictions tab
- For Discussions, click the down arrow next to the topic name and choose Edit.
- To manage all dates at once go to Course Admin - Manage Dates
New Quiz Experience
Editing of some kinds of quiz questions has been streamlined. If you receive a prompt to enable the new "Quiz Experience", choose "yes" to enable it and take advantage of the new changes.
- This affects editing or creating Multiple Choice, True/False, Written Response, and Short Answer questions
- This does not affect how a quiz is taken or presented.
- You can turn this off by clicking the pull-down in the upper-right of the question
editing screen.
New Semester Checklist
If you're teaching a new semester or a brand new course, there's a few things you can do right away to save time later:
- Copy your course from Course Admin-> Import/Export/Copy if you are reusing content from last term, contact eLearning for help on copying
- Bulk Offset the dates in Course Admin-> Manage Dates, to quickly move dates from Spring to Fall or Fall 2018 to Fall 2019
- Create a welcome Announcement to introduce students to yourself and the course
- Update your gradebook and automatically release the Final Calculated Grade under Grades->Settings->Calculation Options so they can see their current percentage without you doing manual steps
- The Your Instructor widget can be added to your course to provide quick contact information to students and put a "face" on your Course Home page. Request a copy from eLearning that you can customize.
Plagiarism Checking and Markup with TurnItIn
Enabling TurnItIn on an Assignment folder allows you to check for plagiarism, markup documents automatically for grammar, and enter your own custom comments. To use it:
- If possible, enable the TurnItIn options when you create the folder
- On the New or Edit folder screen under the new TurnItIn tab select "Enable GradeMark for this folder."
- If you would like the plagiarism checker, you'll also need to select "Enable Originality Check for this folder."
- Scroll down for Grammar and other markup options, found in "More Options for TurnItIn" if you so desire.
Releasing Up-To-Date Grades
By default, D2L does not show students their current percentage in your class until you release it. This can be done at any time with these steps:
- Go Grades, Manage Grades then Settings in the upper-right.
- On the Calculation Options tab, check "Calculated Final Grade" and "Automatically release final grade".
- The grades will be released to everyone as soon as the next new score comes in
- If you copy the course to a future term, this setting will be kept, so you only have to do it once!
Check out this video on releasing final grades for a more-detailed overview, along wih more options for setting up your gradebook effectively.
Video Note
Need to insert a quick video? Video Note is now available anywhere you see the Editor, like when creating an Announcement or providing feedback.
- Go to Insert Stuff
in the upper left and click on VideoNote. Make sure your webcam and/or microphone are connected.
- Choose New Recording to record your video. When you are finished, click Stop Recording.
- Click Next. Create a title and a description for your video, then click Next again.
- Click Insert.
Viewing Student Progress
The User Progress tool can keep you updated on what students are viewing. It will also show you when and for how long they accessed that part of your course. It can provide data on Content, Discussions, Assignments, and Quizzes.
- Go to the Classlist
- Click on the down arrow to the right of a student's name
- Choose "View Progress"
- You can also view aggregate data by going to Course Admin and "View User Progress"
Who to Contact for Help
Contacting the right party from the beginning will get help faster, here's a brief list of who to talk to:
- For Issues Inside D2L: if you have a problem after logging in to D2L, contact eLearning at msubonline@msubillings.edu or 406 657 2192
- For Issues Outside of D2L: If you can't log in or have another issue outside of D2L, contact our IT Helpdesk at helpdesk@msubillings.edu or 406 247 5700
- For Issues with MyInfo: contact Admissions and Records at 406 657 2158