Your August Course Design Tip

Aug. 24, 2021

Learn how to make your file names clean, concise, and clear in D2L.

A white painted outline of a lightbulb on a blackboard with a yellow cloth center as a light.

Having a clear and consistent naming structure for your course is an easy way to implement a positive and impactful change for both students and fellow faculty that may also be teaching from the same materials or D2L site.

Some additional benefits include:

  • Helps strengthen several specific review standards under general standard 8 in the QM rubric.

  • Improves course accessibility and inclusion.

  • Reduces cognitive load and overall confusion from students.

    • Helps reduce those 3 AM “I can’t find this!!” emails.

    • Students can focus on the material, instead of getting frustrated trying to locate a specific reading, or assignment sheet.

  • Supports newer faculty, TA’s, and co-instructors locate information, understand the course design, and support students.

Action

Before uploading or creating files to D2L, review the file names and rename files so they have clear and self-explanatory names.

Examples

  • Lecture 1 PowerPoint Slides.pptx

  • Linear Regression Worksheet.docx

  • ODL 101 Spring 2021 Syllabus.pdf

  • Week 1 Overview

In D2L

Even if you have a course or you are creating a course for the first time, it is very easy to update the file names in D2L.

  • Edit Properties In-Place: This allows you to edit the name of files, webpages, and other content individually.

  • Bulk Edit: This awesome feature allows you to update file names(among other things too!) for everything in the module. This is an awesome time-saving feature that allows you to update batches of files at once.