Many courses at Canisius have online quizzes or even exams through D2L’s Quizzes tool. But for students it has been occasionally frustrating that D2L displayed quiz questions to them in a relatively limited portion of their screen. This “letter-box” sometimes meant students had to scroll just to read a single multiple-choice question, before choosing an answer.
As part of a series of small upgrades, D2L will now display a quiz using a student’s entire screen. This hides the unnecessary header elements and shows students only the quiz they are taking. Full-screen exams and quizzes will appear at the end of November. This comes after other recent upgrades, such as auto-saving, which helps reduce distracting tasks when students need to focus on exam or quiz questions. Earlier in the summer, D2L simplified question randomization and question banks, making it easier for professors to build exams that serve each student a somewhat different quiz from banks of questions.
All in all, D2L’s quizzes tool is getting easier for professors and students to use. D2L is also making it easier to use other tools as well; stay tuned for (more) improvements to D2L’s rubrics tool, too!