Friday, November 20, 2015

D2L Upgrade: Continuous Delivery

Coming Soon: D2L Continuous Delivery

When?

On December 16 we will be upgrading the NLU Online Campus for D2L's "Continuous Delivery," version 10.5.5. Important note: You can expect D2L to be offline on December 16 for the entire day, so plan accordingly.

Why?

A major benefit of this upgrade is that in the future we will be able to roll out enhancements and improvements to the learning environment as they become available without the inconvenience of downtime. The biggest impact of this upgrade is found behind the scenes and under the hood. There are, however, some immediate benefits in usability and workflow. When you log in to D2L after December 16, you may notice a subtly cleaner look. We'd like to point out a few of the functional enhancements you also may notice as you work in your learning environment.

Who and What?

The Pulse app for iOS and Android keeps the course info you want at your fingertips when you are on the go.

Learners

  • D2L Content's "Course Schedule" feature keeps track of upcoming course work and even points out any past due work.
  • Keep your finger on the Pulse of your learning experience with the new Pulse mobile app for iOS and Android.
  • Online Discussion is a convenient way to communicate asynchronously in any course, and is the heart and soul of many online courses. D2L 10.5 makes reading and participating in online Discussion even more convenient and intuitive. You expand the full text of the root post of a thread in the topic view by clicking "More," and collapse it again by clicking "Less."

Instructors

  • Course Copy can now include the associated files when copying individual Content modules, Dropbox folders, or Discussion topics. Content pages are analyzed to make sure that the associated files (e.g., images and style sheets) come along so that copied Content modules look as they should in their destination course.
  • "NOT" adds long-awaited power and logic to selective release. It allows faculty to create a release condition for those not meeting a specified condition. For example, there can be a News Announcement that is visible only to students who have NOT submitted an assignment.
  • Personalize your D2L landing page by toggling between the "Classic Home Page" and a new "Personal Dashboard" that puts the focus on specific instructor tasks.
  • Would Badges, awards, and Certificates be useful in your course? D2L can now provide these features.
  • Bulk delete has returned to the Discussion tool, simplifying course revision and the cleanup of unfortunate course copy accidents.

2 comments:

Vlad said...

Thank you, Renee! We are very excited about the upgrades, and appreciate the work that your team does!

EnglishTeacher101 said...

Note that using the "NOT" operator in release conditions as been rescheduled for January. Still something to look forward to!