At the beginning of the quarter, the course website must be activated for the students to be able to access it. Otherwise, it cannot be displayed in their list of the courses in D2L at all. Initially, all courses are set to inactive status so that the students cannot access the course website before set up is complete.
The activation settings for the course website are located on a Course Offering Information page. There are links to this page in two different places in DePaul D2L:
- The list of the courses on the DePaul D2L home page.
- Through the course website main menu.
Course Activation
As we know that at the beginning of the quarter, you have to activate your course site manually for the students to be able to access it. Initially, all courses are set to inactive status so that students will not be able to access the course site before you have finished setting it up.
Best Practices:
- You have to send an email and post a news item after you activate the course.
When you activate your course, make sure your students know. Please send a welcome email and copy the same email to a news item.
- Draft vs. Published mode
If you need to activate your course, but you have not completed uploading all the course content, you have the choice to keep modules or course files in “draft” mode. You are able to “publish” them when you are ready. This is going to allow the students to see the content you have completed and make the necessary preparations to start the course.
Activate Course from DePaul D2L Home Page
For note: Due to a known bug, to see the change in course activation when working from the DePaul D2L Home Page, the instructors are going to need to log out and log in again after saving during some steps. After logging back in, the course activation change is going to be reflected on the course card under My Courses.
- The first step is to hover over the course image on the D2L home page.
- After that, the instructors have to choose the ellipsis (A).
- The next step that the instructors have to do is to choose Course Offering Information from the dropdown menu (B).
- Under the section titled “Active,” the instructors are able to choose the checkbox next to “Course is active” (A).
- The last step, choose Save (B). Now, the course is activated. The students are going to see it listed when they log in to DePaul D2L.
Activate Course from within the Course Site
Here are steps to activate course from within the course site:
- At the first step, go to the D2L course site which needs to be activated.
- After that, the instructors have to choose the Edit Course from the course navigation bar.
- Then, the instructors are able to choose Course Administration from the dropdown menu.
- Please choose Course Offering Information.
- Under the section titled “Active”, and choose the checkbox by “Course is Active” (A).
- Lastly, choose the Save button to save changes (B). Now, the course is activated, and the students are going to see it listed when they log in to DePaul D2L.
For note: By default the Course Administration page is opened in the Category view. It is set with the Category tab, that is near the top of the Course Administration page. To change the view to list all contents alphabetically, you are able to choose the Name tab instead.
Course Setup
Making a Module and Submodule
The modules are used to organize the course’s content, like folders on your computer or chapters within a book. You are able to set up modules by time frame, by topic, or by course components. All of your course’s content is added into a module. You have to make one before you add files, links, or other items to your Content area.
Best Practices:
- You have to keep the organizational structure consistent.
- Please be sure to keep the module organizational method consistent. For instance, if you decide to title the modules by week, so title each module “Week X”.
- You have to use parallel structure to title submodules.
- The same principle applies to the submodules. For example: Week 1 submodules “Assignments”, then Week 2 might be the same submodule titles.
Adding your Syllabus and Other Content
Adding your syllabus, course schedule, readings, Powerpoints, assignment rubrics and instructions, website links is an important step in getting your course ready for the students to see. Short descriptions which give guidance or additional instructions can be added to the content. Aside from that, the content can be organized into folders to align with the organization of the course.
Best Practices
- Name files with short, descriptive titles.
If you are uploading documents from your computer, you have to be sure to name files with short but descriptive titles so you are able to discover them later and the students are able to understand what the file will contain. P327fbd.pdf is not a useful title for a document in your course as it does not indicate what the file contains.
- Add descriptive text.
Descriptions are able to add context and give guidance on your files and content. You will be able to add descriptions to a file or link (topic) which will be visible to the students when they see the module it is in (but not in the table of contents view.) When you are editing descriptions, ensure to click update to save each edit.
- Avoid punctuation in document file names.
When you or your students download documents from DePaul 2L, automatically the system replaces any spaces in the title with plus signs. If you want to avoid this, you do not put any punctuation or spaces in the file name. If you want to separate the words in a file name, you have to use underscores.
