Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Desire2Learn Course User Guidelines
Users must agree to abide by the Desire2Learn Course User Guidelines listed below

Purpose & Scope   [back to top]
SDSU began the use of Desire2Learn (D2L)in the spring of 2008. D2L is intended to support faculty who are developing courses which are posted in the SDSU Course Schedule. Requests for other uses for will be considered on an individual basis through the Office of Information Technology. The SDSU D2L User Guidelines have been developed to standardize the implementation and use of D2L to ensure reliable and consistent service support from the equipment and technical staff who support D2L. These policies are subject to change and were last updated on July 1, 2008.

Account & Course Creation   [back to top]

• Faculty will need to complete the Online Course Request Form (the form follows this page). Faculty should request D2L accounts in advance of course development to allow time for training, instructional design consultations, creating content, and many of the other time consuming tasks that go along with creating a D2L class.
• If the course is approved, faculty will receive an e-mail message within ten (10) working days that provides their account information.
• The naming convention for all unique course IDs is: the coures name as listed in the SDSU Course Schedule, including section number, semester and instructor name. For example, John Doe has a course Summer Session 2008 entitled English 101 section 3, English Composition I. The unique course ID is: Engl_101S03_2008SU-English Composition I-Doe. Course IDs and titles are unique to each course and cannot be changed.

Username & Password   [back to top]

• Faculty and staff and Students will use their webadvisor usernames to access D2L.
• Upon enrollment users will receive an email to their official university address with instructions on accessing D2L. To find your official email please click here.
• All users can change their own passwords if they either know their username and official email address. To change your password click here.
• Faculty and students can have their password reset or changed by contacting the SDSU Support Desk (605-688-6776).
• For username and password problems, call the SDSU Support Desk (605-688-6776).

Costs [back to top]
D2Lcan be used by any faculty, staff, and students in the South Dakota Regental System. For D2L courses that are created to support D2L credit-based classes, there are no associated D2L costs.

For D2L courses that are created to support other SDSU classes or activities that are not listed as credit bearing:

• Request for D2L courses should be made to Instructional Design Services using the Online Course Request Form.
• If the request if approved, there may be a cost required for the D2L course.
• Each course may be limited to a certain number of students.
• Designers are responsible for loading their own students into their courses.
• SDSU Support Desk assistance will be during regular published hours.

Student Enrollment   [back to top]
Once a student enrolls in a Regental Course their student information will be loaded in D2L. Conversely, once a student drops the course their information will be removed, but their record will be retained. These records are available by contacting IDS. This information lags at least one day behind actual registration days.

Definition of Users   [back to top]

1. Univ Students
   Students are added as Univ Students to courses. Students have no ability to alter any component or aspect of a D2L course.
   
2. Univ Instructors
   Faculty members are added as Univ Instructors to courses. This gives them the ability to make design choices for their particular classes. Designers have full control over the look and feel, layout, content and navigation of their course. Primary Univ Instructors (Instructor of record in Colleague System) can share designer access to the course by adding other Univ Instructors to the course.
   
3. Helpdesk
   D2L Helpdesk users have access to certain D2L Administrator functions if and only if those functions have been enabled by the D2L Administrator. The functions include:
   1. Remove Users from Courses
   2. Change User Type
   3. Modify Passwords
   
   
4. Campus Administrators
   D2L Campus Administrators have full control over every aspect of D2L.

Course Backup Strategies   [back to top]

• Desire2Learn System backups
  Desire2Learn provides a weekly backup of all D2L files on the server. This file set is used to restore courses in the case of a catastrophic failure.

Course Completion   [back to top]
Upon the completion of a course students will lose access to the course 10 days after final grades are due. The course will remain available to the instructor for a period of five (5) years post completion.

Academic Term Management
Each semester a new "shell" will be created for each course in the colleague system. It is the instructors prerogative to use Desire2Learn. All fully online course are REQUIRED to use D2L. At the onset of a new semester each faculty will be responsible for moving content from the past semesters shell to the current semesters shell. For more information on moving material please click here.

Support   [back to top]
For all faculty and students, D2L is supported by the SDSU Support Desk (605-688-6776).

Training   [back to top]
D2L and related training is delivered by Instructional Design Services. View and Register and Training Sessions here.

Maintenance Schedule   [back to top]
Desire2Learn will be unavailable every 4th Sunday of the month from 12-6am CST for scheduled maintenance. If unscheduled maintenance is needed, all attempts will be made to pick a time that will cause minimal impact. Notification will be available through the News widget when you log into D2L.