Managing Due Dates for Multiple Sections

Question

I have a client who is in charge of setting up Assignments for several Biology Labs, each with hundreds of students and at least 20 Sections. Each lab Assignment is due based on the day that the lab takes place during the week. Currently, the best way we have found is to set Special Access for each lab section based on the day the lab occurs, but in that menu, each section has to be identified and selected individually. With the number of sections, assignments, and courses, this is a tedious, daunting, and time-consuming process. Is there a way to reliably add all Students from multiple sections into one group? That way we could set the permissions for each day of the week per Assignment by Groups without having to select each individual Section every time. Basically, go through the process 5 times per Assignment, instead of 20+.

Jef.W.802 · Answer

This had occurred to me, but is prohibitively tedious for the size and amount of classes this individual is dealing with. Not a bad approach if dealing with smaller or fewer classes, but it seems like it would be very easy to either miss a name or add a student to the wrong Group when dealing with so many. It would be great if one could filter by Sections when adding to a Group, then just select all. I also understand why it’s set up the way it is. The main function of Groups is to split up Sections, not combine them, but could it also be both?

Jennifer.W.973 · Answer

@Jef.W.802 Unless your D2L admin has disabled something that would prevent this, you should be able to create Groups, add students from multiple sections to one group, and then use Special Access based on those 5 Groups instead of 20+ Sections. However, I don't believe there is an easy to way to select only students from certain sections when enrolling students into groups. You can't filter or sort by section, so you would need to select each student individually.