Presentation by Barry Dahl, Teaching & Learning Advocate at D2L. Wednesday, October 9 at SFASU. The D2L Lunch-n-Learn events will showcase teaching and learning within Brightspace, and sessions will feature topics such as effective practices in instructional design, web accessibility, increasing student engagement, and much more. It’s a great opportunity to exchange new ideas, as well as learn more about the Brightspace community.

1. 7 Ways to Use the "Not" Release Conditions
to Impact Teaching & Learning
Barry Dahl, Teaching & Learning Advocate

2. Release Conditions
• Definition: Release conditions are conditional
requirements that restrict access or visibility to
specific content, resources or areas within the
Brightspace Learning Environment. Users must
satisfy the conditions before the restrictions are
removed.
• Additional release conditions have been added
for students who have NOT satisfied certain
restrictions.

3. Variables that can trigger the release of
something else
• Assignments
• Received feedback on Assignment
• Award Earned
• Checklist completion
• Checklist item
• Classlist enrollment
• Groups, Sections, Roles, Dates
• Competencies
• Including Learning Objectives
• Content topics
• Discussion topics
• Grade values
• Quizzes
• Including score on specific questions
• Rubric scores
• Surveys
• Blue italic items don’t include NOT

4. Items that can be released
• Announcements
• Assignments
• Awards
• Checklist
• Content modules
• Content topics
• Custom widgets
• Discussion forums
• Discussion topics
• Grade items
• Grade categories
• Quizzes
• Surveys

5. Example 1: Announcement for those students
who didn’t view content
• Announcement is released
only to those students who
didn’t view a particular
page (or pages) of course
content.
• If they subscribe to
notifications, this will get
pushed out to them.

6. Example 1: Attaching release conditions to
Announcement
• Creating the
announcement is easy.
• Add the NOT release
condition based on
content page not
opened.

7. Example 2: Announcement for those
who did one thing but not another

8. Example 2: Multiple release conditions
attached to Announcement

9. Example 3: Intelligent agent for
missing an assessment deadline

10. Example 3: email to instructor as
notification

11. Example 4: Intelligent agent for
lack of discussion posting

12. Example 4: email to student as
notification

13. Example 5: Intelligent agent to notify
you of curious activity

14. Example 5: Email to alert you of
possible suspicious behavior

15. Example 6: Extra Credit
• Warning! You might not like this one. 
• Scenario: to encourage students to submit a survey, you
give them 5 points of extra credit.
• NOTE: survey cannot be anonymous for this to work.
• Examples: demographics survey or technology
usage/skills survey during first week of class.

16. Example 6: Take away bonus points for
not completing survey
• Research has shown that people can be more highly
motivated at the prospect of losing something they
already have, rather than getting something they don’t.
• Give everyone 5 bonus points in advance, but tell them
that you will take those points away if they don’t submit
the survey.
• Research source: http://bit.ly/minus5pts

17. Example 6: News item widget displays
-5 point “badge”

18. Example 6: News item settings

19. Example 7: Additional content released
for Competency not met
• This course has three requirements that students must
complete during the first week.
• Those three activities are intended to ensure that
students can use the LMS tools that are needed for
success.
• Those three activities (or Learning Objectives) have been
bundled together into a Competency.

20. Example 7: Setting First-Week Activities
Release Conditions

21. Example 7: Help Content for First-Week
Activities Released

22. Other Release Condition Possibilities
• Checklist not completed
• Checklist item not checked
• Quiz not submitted
• Learning objective not achieved
• No grade score in grade book

23. PIE Items related to Release Conditions
• D1837: Show assessment with release conditions
• D737: Ability to create release conditions based on a
formula grade item – NOTE: Final Grade now available
• D2140: Release Condtion based on Group Category

24. More PIE Items
• D1384: New Release Condition for Content, where all
topics in module have been visited, or not
• D2463: NEW User Must satisfy option, where they could
satisfy X out of XX release conditions
• D2835: replace strings include {MatchingCriteria}

25. Q & A