Blog posts archive

January 2016

Providing information about supported learning technologies at uWaterloo. Our primary learning system, Waterloo LEARN, receives monthly system updates from our vendor, D2L. Highlights of those updates will be posted here.

Introducing Turnitin Feedback Studio

Turnitin is being upgraded to Turnitin Feedback Studio for the Winter 2017 semester. This new version provides the same functionality, but uses an updated look and feel. Once you open the Originality Report you will see two tool bars on the right hand side. The blue one contains the GradeMark functionality and the red one contains the Originality Report functionality. There is also an option to return to the Turnitin Classic View.

November 2016 D2L Updates

What's New:

Some new look and feel changes to the Quizzing tool have been introduced to Waterloo LEARN. The next time you create a multiple choice question you will be given the opportunity to opt-in or out of the design changes. Once you opt-in, however, you won't be able to opt-out again. Similar changes will coming to other question types in future updates.

Welcome to Fall

Welcome back for the Fall semester. Over the summer months, there were a few system updates to note.

What's New?

Discussions:

What's in a Name?

New for the Fall 2016 term!

D2L has introduced some new terminology which Waterloo LEARN will be adopting. The most significant changes that will impact instructors and students are the following:

June 2016 D2L Update

What's New:

A new Group Enrolment Type has been introduced, called 'Single user, member-specific groups'. This group category will create a group for each student and use the first and last name of the student as the group name. It will also automatically create a new group when a new student is enrolled in the course. The Single-user group enrolment type would primarily be used for journalling activities in Discussions.

Fixes:

May 2016 D2L Update

What's New?

D2L continues to improve their functionality using Rubrics with Discussions. The Overall Score from the Rubric will now automatically transfer to the Topic Score of the Discussion. Before, it was necessary to manually transfer the grade over.

Instructors now have the ability to override the number of quiz attempts allowed for an individual student through Special Access.

April 2016 D2L Update

Fixes:

When marking in a Dropbox, if draft feedback was saved, the date/timestamp wasn't updated when the Publish Feedback icon was clicked. The date/timestamp will now update as expected.

Get Ready for the Spring Term by Requesting your LEARN Course Shell

Requesting single section courses can be done by logging into Waterloo LEARN and clicking the Request a Course link found in the Instructor Tools widget. Once you have submitted the request we will approve it as quickly as possible and in most cases the course will be available after 9:00 am the next day.

March 2016 D2L Update

What's New?

Instructors are now able to export the event log for an entire Quiz. Before, instructors were only able to see an individual student's quiz event log online. Now they can export the event log for all quiz attempts to a csv file. This new feature can be found on the Grade Quiz page.

A new look and feel has been introduced for holistic rubrics within the Discussion tool. The display has been updated to make it easier to understand.

Turnitin Originality Reports will now be available to instructors even after the course has ended.

January/February 2016 D2L Update

What's New?

D2L has updated their list of supported web browsers. Both Safari and Edge are now supported and should pass using the Check My System widget on the LEARN System Home Page.

New 'Not' Operator Condition Types have been added to Release Conditions. Some examples include: Not visited content topic, No submission to dropbox, and No completed quiz attempt.

Fixes: