Notifications - General Overview

The Notifications feature of D2L give you the option to receive notifications about activity in your courses. To subscribe to notification sources, specify the time for daily course summaries, and identify courses you do not want to receive notifications for, click on the Notifications icon (looks like a gear).

Clicking on the notifications icon will take you to the Notifications "control" page.

Contact Methods

A user's UWM email address is the default. You can change the email settings to a different system email or a custom email address. 


You can also register a mobile number to receive text-message notifications via your mobile device. Once you register your mobile device, you will be able to select the maximum number of messages received per day. The options range from 5 to "no limit." 


NOTE: The user is responsible for all charges resulting from receipt of text messages from the D2L system.  Check with your cell phone service provider to understand your cell phone text messaging plan.

Summary of Activity

There are two options – never or daily. A time for this summary must be specified when “daily” is selected.

Instant Notifications

Discussions: You can choose to receive an email from the D2L system that notifies you of unread discussion messages, however discussion messages cannot be sent directly to a mobile device.

Dropbox and News (update and new) have email and mobile options. Messages regarding changes to these areas are sent as they occur. They will also come through as part of the daily Summary of Activity. These messages will appear to be from the helpdesk (News) or the UWM Help Desk (Dropbox).

Exclude Some Courses

You can select courses and groups to exclude from your Summary of Activity and/or Instant Notifications.

Submitting a file to Dropbox

• There are multiple steps to the process of submitting a file to a D2L dropbox.  If all the steps are not completed, the file will not be submitted successfully. Here is the sequence of steps:

·       Click [Add a File]

·       In the popup window, click [Browse]

·       Navigate to the desired file and double-click

·       Click [Upload]

·       Click [Submit] 

(Students will receive a confirmation email when file has uploaded)

• Students should use a file format (e.g., Word) that you have specifically prescribed, so that you will be able to read their submissions when you download them.

• Both instructors and students should use file names that contain only the normal letters of the English alphabet, in addition to spaces, dashes, or underscores.  Including even a single odd character – e.g., ampersand, apostrophe, pound sign, exclamation mark – in the filename can make it impossible to download. Finally, there must be only ONE period (.) in the filename – located between the descriptive text and the file type (e.g., file1.doc).

"Stack Overflow" Errors in Internet Explorer

Internet Explorer users may see "stack overflow at line: 0" errors in various areas of D2L.


These errors related to the use of Internet Explorer browser, and are not actually D2L errors.


You should be able to click through them, but to avoid the errors altogether, we recommend either:

• clearing your browser's cache, then accessing D2L directly at https://uwm.courses.wisconsin.edu rather than through the UWM Homepage 

OR

• switching to Firefox

NOTE:  Some users prefer Internet Explorer because they are not able to right-click to cut and paste in D2L when using Firefox.  However, keyboard shortcuts *will* allow you to cut and paste equally well in Firefox.  Here's how:

• To cut: hold down the [Ctrl] key and then the letter [x]

• To copy: hold down the [Ctrl] key and then the letter [c]

• To paste: hold down the [Ctrl] key and then the letter [v]

Online quiz technical guidelines for students

Instructors are urged to give students these guidelines to avoid technical problems during online quizzes:

• Use the most reliable internet connection available: Come to a campus lab, if possible. Next in reliability are cable modem and DSL. Dial-up is not recommended.

• Use a "hard-wired" internet connection, NOT WIRELESS.
  
• SAVE each answer as they move through the quiz.

• WAIT a minute after hitting Submit Quiz, before shutting down the browser or logging out of D2L -- this allows the system to properly save their responses and do the auto-grading, if that option is enabled.

• If the student has browser issues (e.g., the browser "freezes") or loses internet connectivity during the quiz, they should
• shut down the browser (not submit the quiz, not log out)
• open a new browser window
• log back into D2L
• navigate to the course and enter the quiz again
• continue taking the quiz.
• NOTE: In a timed quiz, the clock keeps ticking.