the upgrade toolkit

The Upgrade Toolkit: Strategies to Help Make Your LE Upgrade a Success

Aisha  Jackson  &  Viktoriya  Oliynyk  University  of  Colorado  Boulder  

h;p://bitly.com/upgradetoolkit  

Office  of  InformaEon  Technology    

Academic  Technology  ConsulEng  

CommunicaEons   IT  Service  Center  

Teaching  &  Learning  

ApplicaEons  Program  

Escalated  Support   Project  Manager   Business  Analyst  

Supporting Desire2Learn

D2L  Pilot  Spring  2011  

D2L  Opt-­‐In  Fall  2011  

D2L  Default  Spring  2012    

D2L  All-­‐In  Fall  2012  

Our Transition to Desire2Learn 9.4.1

Upgrade  Schedule    

LE  10.1   LE  10.2  

Produc6on  Instance   January  2-­‐3,  2013   August  14,  2013  

Test  Instance   December  11,  2012   July  25,  2013  

Development  Instance   November  22,  2012   July  22,  2013  

Typically, what are your upgrade related concerns?

Our Concerns

•  Timeline •  New interface •  The unknown •  Negative feelings about D2L •  Managing expectations •  Change

Preparing for the Upgrade

•  Reviewed Support Request Data •  Reviewed Documentation Usage Statistics •  Made sense of the changes and decided

what to do about them

Number of D2L Support Requests for Academic Technology Consulting Group Spring 2011 – Spring 2013

Num

ber  o

f  Con

tacts  

Months  

0

50

100

150

200

250

300

350

400

450

1 2 3 4 5

Fall 2011

Spring 2012 Fall 2012

Srping 2013 Spring 2011

Spring  2013  Spring  2012  –  Fall  2012  

Number of “Instructors Roles” in D2L and Those Who Contacted ATCs Spring 2012 and Fall 2012

3097  

3882  

274   308  

Spring  2012   Fall  2012    

Instructors  in  D2L  

Instructors  that  contacted  ATCs  

Number of D2L Workshops Attendees by Semester 159  

51  

11   7  

92  

40  

16   12  18  6   0   5   11  

GeKng  to  Know  D2L  (overview)  

GeKng  to  Work  with  D2L  (hands-­‐

on)    

D2L  Grades   D2L  Quizzes     GeKng  up  to  Speed  with  10.1  

 Spring  2012  Fall  2012  

Page Views of D2L Documentation on OIT Website Spring 2012 and Fall 2012

183  

414  

714  

788  

962  

1247  

1376  

1401  

1787  

1826  

2531  

2608  

4658  

Nav  Bar  

Discussions    

SecEons  

IntroducEon  to  the  D2L  Pla\orm*  

Copy  Content  Between  Courses*  

Clickers  IntegraEon*  

Using  Media  

Dropbox    

Homepages  and  Widgets  

Quizzes    

Classlist  

Content    

Grades  

Understand the Changes

Feature  Tracking  Document  

Upgrade  Guide  

Features  Guide  

The Communication & Documentation Buckets •  Discussions Tool Improvements

– When creating and editing discussion topics, users can now select an option that requires students to post a message to the topic before being allowed to read and reply to other messages in the topic.

The Design Bucket

•  Interface changes – The navigation bar has been redesigned. A

new navigation mini-bar has been added. Custom link groups can be created on a navigation bar at both the site and course level.

The Do Nothing Bucket

•  Content Tool Improvements – The panel also supports swipe gestures on

tablets so you can swipe left to expand and right to collapse the panel on your iPad or Android device.

The Question Bucket

•  Dropbox Tool Improvement – Description – Downloaded Dropbox

submissions are assigned a unique identifier, enabling the system to recognize the files upon upload.

– Question – Can instructors change anything in the file name?

The Notify Bucket

•  Accessibility Improvements – Discussions Tool –  In grid view, unread posts are called out with a

bold subject line. In the new reading view, the subject line is still bold. In addition, there is an easy-to-scan left border. Unread posts are also marked up in a manner that is fully accessible to assistive technologies.

The Verify Bucket

•  Grade Tool Improvements – D2L has introduced a new calculation method,

Milestone Grade Calculation, which ensures that the total score is the sum of the denominators of the chosen grade items, rather than scaling the excluded items to total 100%.

•  Verify bucket items became part of Upgrade Task list

Understand the Changes

•  Interviews with other Universities •  D2L Led Training

Key Take Aways…

1.  Prioritize and update your documentation based on data

2.  Communicate about the change and the improvements via most visited /used resources

3.  Study the changes and decide how you’re going to handle them

4.  Prepare for the unexpected

D2L System Outage January 31 – February 2

The Upgrade Toolkit http://bitly.com/upgradetoolkit •  Formula for Analyzing Support Requests -

Template and Example •  Feature Tracking Template and Example •  Communication Schedule •  General Upgrade Communication •  LE 10.2 Questions and Answers •  Upgrade Task Lists •  Desire2Learn Workarounds

Discussion and Questions…

Contact Us

•  Aisha Jackson – Program Manager – Teaching and Learning

Applications – aisha.jackson@colorado.edu

•  Viktoriya Oliynyk – Academic Technology Consultant – viktoriya.oliynyk@colorado.edu