Introduction to the D2L Learning Environment -...

Learning Technology Center | Introduction to the D2L Learning Environment | April. 9, 2018

Center for Computing Services | Clarion University of PA

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Introduction to the D2L Learning Environment

When you first log into D2L/Brightspace, the My Home page is displayed. The My Home page is your starting point within the D2L/Brightspace Learning Environment and is comprised of widgets and individual content frames. The default My Home page consists of a My Courses area as well as a D2L support and Student Announcements widget. Please click a link below to jump to a specific topic.

My Home Page

Personal Settings

Profile

Notifications

Account Settings

Locker

D2L Help

University Resources

Support and Announcements

Navigating your Course

My Home Page

The My Home page is the first page you see after logging into the learning environment. To access

courses, users must search for and pin courses to the “My Courses” area.

1. Click “View All Courses”; on the next screen, enter the year and term such as “2018spring”

2. Click the search icon (magnifying glass) to display all the courses you are enrolled in for that term

3. Next, hover over the course graphic to see the “more actions” menu (three dots)

4. Click “Pin” to add the course to the My Courses area; repeat to unpin as needed



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Course selector: Users can easily toggle between courses using the course selector. Courses are listed

alphabetically in the course selector up to 25 maximum. Previously pinned courses will be at the top of the

displayed list of courses. Use “Advance Search” to filter a course search by Role or Semester. Toggle the

“Pin” icon on/off to keep desired courses pinned to the top of the list for quick access.

Alerts: Alerts in the minibar notify users of updates within courses. If there are any new, unread alerts, an

orange dot will appear over one of the icons in the image below. Users can click the icon to see updates

across all their courses.

a) Message Alerts: Not enabled in Clarion University D2L environment.

b) Subscription Alerts: When users subscribe to a discussion forum or thread, this alert will indicate that

something new has been added.

c) Update Alerts: Indicates updates have been made to grades, content, announcements, due dates, etc.

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Personal Settings

Personal Settings can be found by clicking on your name in the top right corner of the screen. It contains links to your profile, notification options, account settings, and log out.

Profile

To access and create your personal profile

1. Select Profile from your personal menu on the minibar.

2. Fill in the text fields. You can enter information about your social networks, contact

information, education and work, and personal details such as your birth date, hobbies, and

favorite things.

3. If you want to upload and display a

profile picture, click Change Picture,

browse and select your image. Your

image can be no larger than 1 MB.

Click Upload once you have selected

your picture.

4. Click Save and Close. Important note:

Be careful what information you

provide in your profile since

everyone who can view your profile

in D2L will have access to this

information.

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Notifications

The Notifications tool enables you to choose a variety of options to receive information from your

courses via email or text messaging:

Subscribe to a summary of activity for each course and receive a daily email.

Specify your mobile number for instant notifications.

Receive instant notifications about course activity, such as edited content, new discussion posts,

assignments, grades, news items and upcoming quizzes via email or text.

1. Select the drop-down box containing your name in the upper right hand corner of the page and select the notifications link.

2. You can choose to change your email settings and add a mobile number to receive notifications

3. Click “change your email settings” to enter a different email to receive notifications 4. Click “register your mobile” to enter a phone number to receive notifications on

5. Choose which notifications you would like to receive and if you want them through email or text message



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6. You can also choose to exclude some classes from the notification messages while continuing to get current notifications.

7. Select the courses that you wish to discontinue notifications for. Click the “x” beside the course

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Account Settings

Use the Account Settings tool to customize and manage your personal preferences for things such as

your online status, Learning Environment's appearance, accessibility options, language and region and

Discussions settings

o Font settings: Adjusting the font face and font size changes the default font and size of text in the

system. It does not affect images, documents, and other objects such as math equations.

o Dialogue Settings: The Show secondary window as options enables you to set secondary windows

as pop-ups instead of dialog boxes. This setting helps screen readers and other assistive

technologies separate the content of the secondary window from the main window. If you are

using assistive technology such as a screen reader, we strongly recommend showing secondary

windows as pop-ups.

o HTML Editor Settings: Provides the option for you to turn off the rich text editor. The HTML editor

has many additional rich text features that might be difficult to navigate with assistive technology.

This option simplifies pages that have text fields, while still allowing you to include HTML content.

o Reading Content: Select the checkbox if you do not want D2L to automatically mark things as read

while you are scrolling through them.

o Video Settings: Select Optimize video presentation for programmatically-driven assistive

technologies if you use assistive technology, such as a screen reader, to navigate the web. This

option ensures that your assistive technology can detect embedded videos; it does not affect the

accessibility of specific video players.

o Time Zone: Sets all dates that include times in Learning Environment to correspond with the time

zone you specify.

o Application Settings: Click Revoke Access if you want to force all your applications or devices to

renew their authentication. This ensures that others cannot, for example, access your grades or

send emails as you if you lose a mobile device or discover that a linked application is compromised.

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Discussions Tab:

The discussion settings provides some options to customize Discussion viewing layout

o Always show the Discussion List pane: Use this setting to show or hide the list of topics in

the View Topic and View Thread pages. Hide it to save space or show it to switch between

topics quickly

o Reply Settings: Use this setting to automatically include the original post by default when

composing a reply.

o Subscription settings:

Email:

1. Send a copy of each outgoing message to: It is recommended you select this option to

automatically send a copy of each email you

send through D2L to your @eagle.clarion.edu

email account.

2. Save a copy of each outgoing message to the

sent mail folder: On by default for D2L, but

there is no Sent email folder within your D2L

courses. You Will NOT receive email in D2L

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Locker

The locker is located on your My Home page. Here, you can store important files for courses by uploading or creating new ones. These files can then be accessed anywhere that you have internet connection. Space is limited to a total of 20.MB

D2L Help

D2L Help provides links to help students and instructors get more information on navigating their

course. The Student Documentation link is very helpful to students when they need more information or

help while in a course. The D2L Support link takes students to a page where they can access 24 x 7, toll

free support number for assistance with any D2L questions. The support site includes an online D2L

help desk ticket for less urgent issues.

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University Resources

The University Resources menu contains links that may be helpful while completing work in your

course. They are pictured below.

Support and Announcements

D2L has a Support and an Announcement widget on your My Home page. It is located on the right hand side of the page. It supplies links that you may find helpful when it comes to specific parts of your course and may answer some of your questions.

The 24x7 D2L Support is a place where students can call at any time to get help with any problems

they may be having with D2L. Students can also submit a Support Ticket with any questions they

may have.

Student Announcements will alert you to any news

regarding D2L.

The planned maintenance widget is continuously updated

to alert you when D2L may be unavailable due to planned

updates.

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Navigating within a Course

Once your courses show up in D2L, you are able to pin them and enter them. To navigate throughout the course, you will use the Course Nav Bar - outlined in red below. Through the Nav Bar, you can access Content, Assessments, Communication, Resources, D2L Help, and University Resources

The Content area is the main instructional area of a course. It will contain documents, videos, or

links your professor decides to use in your course.

Content

Content is where you find course materials such as the syllabus, lecture notes, readings and assignments.

Click on the Content link in the course Navigation Bar.

Viewing Course Content Files

When you access the Content tool, you will see the Table of Contents depicting the structure of the course materials on the left side of the display. Click a module title to display the files contained in the module. Then click a topic title to view the file.

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Click a module on the left:

Click a topic to view the file; navigate through the content using one of the following

options:



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Assessments menu contains links to Assignments, Grades, Quizzes, Rubrics, Self-Assessments, and

Class Progress

Communication menu contains links to Chat, Classlist, Discussions, Groups, Online Rooms, and

Wiggio.

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Learning Technology Center | Introduction to the D2L Learning Environment | April 9, 2018


Resources menu contains links to Calendar, Checklist, Locker, Announcements, Surveys, and

Glossary.

D2l Help menu contains links to Contact D2L Support, Student Documentation, Instuctor

Documentation, D2L Tech Requirements, and System Check.

Learning Technology Center | Introduction to the D2L Learning Environment | April 9, 2018


University Resources menu contains Academic Honesty Policy, Bookstore/Textbook info (Follett

Disciver), Computing Serivces, Disability Support Services, Library, and Online Writig Center.

Please Note: Your instructor may not use of these tools. Your course navigation may not match

these images.

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Introduction to the D2L Learning Environment -...

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