Presentation at the 2013 FUSION Conference

1. 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

2. Office
of
InformaEon
Technology
Academic
Technology
ConsulEng
CommunicaEons
IT
Service
Center
Teaching
&
Learning
ApplicaEons
Program
Escalated
Support
Project
Manager
Business
Analyst
Supporting Desire2Learn

3. 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

4. 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

5. Typically, what are your
upgrade related concerns?

6. Our Concerns
• Timeline
• New interface
• The unknown
• Negative feelings about D2L
• Managing expectations
• Change

7. Preparing for the Upgrade
• Reviewed Support Request Data
• Reviewed Documentation Usage Statistics
• Made sense of the changes and decided
what to do about them

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

9. Spring
2013
Spring
2012
–
Fall
2012

10. 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

11. 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

12. 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
Plaorm*
Copy
Content
Between
Courses*
Clickers
IntegraEon*
Using
Media
Dropbox
Homepages
and
Widgets
Quizzes
Classlist
Content
Grades

13. Understand the Changes
Feature
Tracking
Document
Upgrade
Guide
Features
Guide

14. 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.

15. 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.

16. 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.

17. 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?

18. 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.

19. 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

20. Understand the Changes
• Interviews with other Universities
• D2L Led Training

21. 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

22. D2L System Outage
January 31 – February 2

23. 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

24. Discussion and Questions…

25. Contact Us
• Aisha Jackson
– Program Manager – Teaching and Learning
Applications
– aisha.jackson@colorado.edu
• Viktoriya Oliynyk
– Academic Technology Consultant
– viktoriya.oliynyk@colorado.edu