Bb Archive Exports - Don't always work

Success is on the way, read this post to the end! John Polagruto (Nutrition) stopped by to confirm the Bb archive process by using the computers in the New Media Lab, LR 114. He struggled to download an archive on the Windows computer in his office on campus and another one from home. So this visit was troubleshooting step. Using the Windows computer in lab, even Internet Explorer gave an error on the zip file download so we tried Firefox. Both archives downloaded instantly - a sure sign the archive was not created by Bb. We tried isolating just the exams and that archive also failed. Then we created a new content area and copied three example files into it. Creating a archive of this one area also failed.

John is looking at the Bb Course Map for Nutrition 340 and will rebuild the course in D2L from this outline. NO, NO, Not Yet ...

But just to confirm the problem is universal. I used Safari on a Macintosh computer and one of his original archives downloaded just fine - 90.4 MB. Oh, what does this mean? Well, there is a setting to enable the instructor role to download the .zip file. Whew! John and other faculty will be please that they can use existing content.

File Names are critical

D2L is very fussy about creative file names. Be safe and use letters and numbers, underscore and hyphens. No periods, slashes, asterisks or other punctuation! Each file should include an extension for type identification, a Microsoft Word document's extension is .doc, an Adobe Acrobat document is a .pdf, etc.

If a file does not upload into D2L - and you get an error, review the file name. Edit the filename to fit the suggestions above and try again.

Chat Tool Revision

Are you using Chat in class? Post/email this information to students:
Students update your Chat user alias ...
Chat > Chat Settings > Type name and click the Save button.

Instructors must make the Chat link visible on the course navigation bar so students have access to the settings tool. Edit Course > Nav Bars > Lower Left tab > Select Chat in the left box and click the [>] button to move/enable the Chat link.

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This post regards a change we just made in the Desire2Learn (D2L) software on 10/1/08 and students editing their Chat Alias will be turned off on 1/1/09. Previously, in the chat tool, only the user-ID is shown. This is not very useful, since User-ID is the student’s ID (w + 7 digits), rather than an identifiable name. Some of you may have decided not to use the chat tool for that reason. As of earlier today, we have changed a system option which will display the chat alias if it is present, in place of the User-ID. This requires action on the student’s part, but gives you the option to instruct your students to create a chat alias for better identification, until the problem is fixed in other ways.

We have been working with D2L for a while to correct this. The 8.3.1 MR1 release (which we are tentatively planning to implement after fall and before spring semester) will allow greater flexibility to specify which value to use (first name + last name, nick name, etc.). We will provide greater detail of that change as we get closer to spring.