Update from Profhelp

Hi Everyone-

Here are the responses to the two most common questions received by Profhelp this fall...  or anyway two of the questions for which she has to give you the opposite of the answer you may want to hear.  Sorry about that!

1. The program chairs have elected to turn off the “New” notification of discussions, dropboxes, quizzes, etc. from the Course Homepage.  For example, when a student leaps straight to the discussion through the icon, the "last access" date in the classlist does not update. This notification has been turned off for both students and instructors. Sorry for any inconvenience.  The update widget still shows unread emails and discussion posts and the email button shows unread emails.
2. Unfortunately, we can’t move the Fall2010 courses to the top of the list on your Course Homepage. The good news is that soon all of the previous term courses will appear on another tab which will allow the current term courses to be the only courses appearing on the instructor tab.

That first answer is driven by financial aid and by students who are having trouble in their class.  We need to have login data that is as close to accurate as possible to manage the financial aid process, particularly for those students who simply stop attending class rather than officially drop.  We had hoped D2L would have a fix for this in place for the fall term, but they are not quite there.  

Yesterday's slowness was primarily due to problems in a data center.  We believe there are still pockets of slowness for D2L users, but nothing consistent.  Student calls to the help desk have not mentioned slowness so students do not appear to be experiencing significant problems.  David Chatham continues to track the issue and will let you know if there is an update.

best,

Lisa Cheney-Steen
Lisa.Cheney-Steen@cccs.edu