Document Viewer in Dropbox

In the D2L Dropbox "Leave Feedback" area, instructors can view student submissions online in D2L (rather than downloading), and can provide feedback in the same screen, if students submit any of the following file types:

• .doc
• .docx
• .ppt
• .pptx
• .txt
• .pdf
• .gif
• .jpg,
• .png.

1. From your D2L Course Home page, click on [Dropbox] in the main navigation bar

2. Click on the appropriate dropbox folder.

3. Click on [Leave Feedback] beside the name of the appropriate student.


4. Click on the student's submitted file to view it in D2L. (NOTE: You can still download the student-submitted files by clicking [Download All Files].  The download will be a .zip file format.)

5. You have several options for leaving feedback on the "Evaluation" screen.

(from top-to-bottom):




5a. You can select or create a rubric by clicking on [Associate Rubric] or [Create Rubric]




5b. If the dropbox is linked to the D2L gradebook, you can enter the points the student earned for this assignment.




5c. You can type or paste in the [General Feedback] text box. 




5d. You can upload a file to leave as feedback. To include an attachment (e.g., a Word document containing your comments), click on [add a file]. 




5e. You can record an audio file to leave as feedback. To record audio, click on [Record Audio]. (NOTE: including a text transcript of your audio recording will make your feedback accessible to all audiences.)

6. Click on [Save] to submit your feedback.




7. You may leave feedback for the next student by clicking [Next Student] near the top of the right column, or you may return to the list of student submissions by clicking on [Back to Folder Submissions] on the top right column.

D2L 9.4.1 SP3 – January 2012

Limits on Path Length Affect Many Tools

Limits on Path Length Affect Many Tools

NOTE: Regardless of the local user's platform (Mac or PC) or operating system, Desire2Learn runs on a Microsoft Windows platform at the server level. Therefore, the following information applies to all users.

There is a new character limit for path names, due to a change imposed by Microsoft Windows at the server level. Folder names are now limited to 50 characters and file names are limited to 128 characters.

As a result of this limitation, actions that would lead to a path length longer than about 200 characters will either fail with no error message (file creation) or result in a 500 error (subfolder creation).

These failures may be seen when character limits are exceeded in the following situations:

• creating course content,
• copying course components,
• importing a course,
• saving dropbox files or feedback,
• saving locker files, or
• creating ePortfolio content.

For this reason, users are encouraged to use shorter file and folder names, particularly when nesting folders.

When troubleshooting 500 errors and failures related to file creation or copying, please consider whether path length restrictions might be the cause.

Note: The vendor has created a feature request to display an informative message when an operation fails because of path length. However, there is no estimate for when this warning message might be deployed in D2L.

Quiz Feedback

In some situations, an instructor may wish to give very specific feedback for each question in a quiz.

When an instructor creates (or edits) a multiple choice question, they will see a [Feedback] text box beside each possible answer ("option"). There is also a Question Feedback text box at the bottom of the page, where the instructor may enter feedback about the overall question.

The instructor may enter text into any of the [Feedback] text boxes, or none of them. The feedback text will appear only after the student submits the quiz and receives a submission view which includes "show questions."

To see the feedback, a student must click the [View Feedback] link under each quiz question in the submission view.

It is possible to leave unique feedback for each multiple choice option associated with it. If a student answers option "1" the student will receive the feedback that the instructor added for option 1. In other words, the feedback is specific for the option that was chosen by the student.

To give "general" feedback for the question, the instructor may enter an identical message in each option's feedback text box --or-- use the "Question Feedback" section at the very bottom of the page.

NOTE: It may be necessary to click on the link named [Expand question feedback] in order to see the overall question Feedback window.

(Many thanks to the LTC's Amy Mangrich for this information!)