While there are a lot of tools that faculty can use outside of D2L (iLearn), we also want to give you more information about how you can use groups in the D2L system to release information, setup discussions and assignment dropboxes, filter students and email within the Classlist, assign a grade to a group and even chat with them online. Believe it or not, the tools in D2L are pretty good for these things.
Groups, Discussions & Dropbox: You can setup groups using the Groups tool under Edit Course. It allows you to setup a group category and then generate groups for that category. If you have multiple projects where you might like to have different groups for each project you can setup different categories. When you setup the groups you can also have it generate a discussion topic that is only accessible by the members of the specific groups as well as a dropbox (assignment) folder that allows the students in a specific group to drop one file for the group rather than each sending you the file individually.
Classlist: Some other options you have with using groups is in the Classlist and Grades tools. You can search for the students that are enrolled in a specific group in the Classlist by selecting the View By drop-down box and choosing Groups. To the right, select the specific group you wan to view and click the Apply button. You can then email the students by choosing “Email everyone this tab” or just select the checkbox next to their name and choose the email icon.
Grades: In the Grades tool you can view by groups also by following the same process. You can also assign a grade to the group as a whole. Once you are viewing that grade item select the correct group. Select the checkbox to the left of all the names, click on the grade icon above the names, enter a single grade to be applied to all the students selected and click Save. It will enter the same grade for all the students you chose.
Chat: To chat with the students (first you will need to add the tool to your navigation bar) you can setup a private chat and just invite the people in the group by selecting Add Members, searching on groups and selecting the people in the group. Students can also setup chats themselves, but if they do this and you are wanting to be involved you will need to be invited.
For more information about Groups and other tools go to the iLearn Resource Site. We are working on getting it completely up to date, but we have linked the most up-to-date tutorials at the top of the page.
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