D2L Blog

So, when can I get access to my courses in D2L?

UPDATE:  The D2L Steering Committee has pushed the access date to summer courses back to April 1st--as stated below--due to the fact that some campuses are having difficulty completing their mapping assignments.  That said, the first date on which instructors will have access to their summer courses will be April 1st.  Check back on the D2L blog for further announcements.

That a good question, and one I've been getting quite frequently as of late.  Here's the short answer:  assuming all goes according to plan, and we are satisfied with testing on March 24^th, those wanting to recreate their summer courses from scratch or self migrate their course information from WebCT to D2L will get access on March 25^th; those wanting their content migrated will need to wait a few more days after that, and those with fall and spring courses will need to wait until we are sure that the summer courses are a go.  Please see step four below for more details.  If we are not satisfied with the testing results on March 24th, we will push the access time a week later to April 1^st, but the process will be the same as outlined above.

So here's the long answer, just in case you were wondering:  integrating our student information system (Datatel Colleague) into D2L is a very complex process, especially when dealing with six universities.  On top of that, users will access their D2L courses with their WebAdvisor username and eventually their WebAdvisor password, which requires an intermediary authentication system.  Another complicating factor is that by default in D2L, every section offered by USD--and all of the other BOR universities for that matter--is created as a single course; however, many instructors like to have multiple sections in the same course, and all of our online courses actually have two sections:  815 (for on-campus students) and 820 (for off-campus students).  That being the case, there is a manual mapping process that all six universities need to complete in order to merge multiple sections into one course--those of you teaching in the summer have probably already received an email regarding this.  Only after the mapping is completed by all six university will the courses be created in D2L.

All of that said, this is how the timeline looks, assuming all goes according to plan:

1. D2L/Colleague integration has been tested for summer courses in our test environment (TEST), and save for a few minor issues, is working well.  RIS plans on setting up and testing the process in production environment (PROD).  The goal is to have this ready by March 17th.
2. Once the connection is complete in PROD, the universities will have one week to complete all of the course mappings for the summer courses as described above.  This deadline for the completion of this task is March 24th.
3. On March 25th, RIS will "flip the switch" and based on the course mappings setup by each of the universities, the summer courses will be created in D2L.
   
4. Those instructors of summer courses will be notified when they have been enrolled into their courses.  Please note the following:
• As stated previously, all sections offered by USD will have a corresponding shell in D2L.  This includes face-to-face, online, DDN, correspondence and all other modalities through which credit-bearing courses are offered.  For example, an instructor who only teaches face-to-face courses, and who has never used WebCT before, will still have his/her sections created in D2L.  This does not mean he/she will required to use the courses, and his/her students will not see them in D2L unless the instructors opts to do so.
• Those who want to start building their course from scratch can do so as soon as they receive notification that their courses are available in D2L.
• Those instructors wanting content from their existing WebCT courses can opt to migrate it themselves, using the course export feature in WebCT.  We will be providing instructions on how to perform this simple process in the immediate future.
• Those instructors, who want assistance in migrating their content into D2L, will need to make an appointment, or attend an open lab session, at their designated migration support site:
  

  College/School	Migration Support Site/Contact
  School of Education	InTEC Don Versteeg (605) 677-5273 | intec@usd.edu
  Health Sciences School of Medicine	Bob Corio Gary Larson
  College of Arts & Sciences School of Business College of Fine Arts School of Law	Center for Teaching & Learning Eric Mosterd (605) 677-5411 | ctl@usd.edu http://www.usd.edu/ctl/d2l/

• Instructors of courses in future terms (2008FA, 2009SP, etc.) will need to wait until we are sure the summer courses are well underway.  We are still working out the process by which courses in future terms will be created in D2L--more so when they will be created--so we will follow up with those instructors as soon as possible.


5. In addition to this process, RIS will be rolling out the central authentication piece described in the paragraph above.  This will eventually allows users to use the same username (WebAdvisor username) and password to access D2L, the Employee portal and WebAdvisor.

That pretty much covers it.  Again, keep checking back here for updates!

Posted at 08:29AM Mar 18, 2008 by Eric James Mosterd in General  |  Comments[0]