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When to use D2L Special Access and Accommodations

In D2L, there are two tools to give students more time to complete quizzes: Special Access and Accommodations.

Special Access, the tool that should be the most familiar, should be used for specific activities and one-time situations, such as personal emergencies. For example, let us say a close family member of a student became ill and went to the hospital on the same day as a D2L Quiz is due. Instead of building a new quiz for that student, you can instead give them special access to the original quiz. You can set it so that they have access to the quiz at a specific date or set it so that they have time from the date you set up the special access until a later date. You can view this video to learn more about Special Access.

You can potentially use Special Access to provide a group of students with an alternative quiz or Dropbox assignment as well. Under Type of Access, above the Add Users to Special Access, there is the option to Allow only users with special access to see this quiz/folder. This could be useful if, for example, several students are on a sports team and are going to be missing the quiz. Or maybe you want to provide several different versions of a midterm or final exam. If you are interested in providing different materials, activities, or exams throughout the semester (maybe because you are teaching a merged course), please contact Tyler Kron-Piatek at COLI to discuss this further.

On the other hand, Accommodations should be used for students who consistently require extra time on Quizzes. This can be especially useful if you are contacted by the Student Accessibility Services on behalf of a student to request they be given more time on all quizzes or exams. Instead of spending time adding Special Access permissions for each individual quiz for this student, you can instead give this student an Accommodation. You only must give this Accommodation once. D2L will understand this to mean that, if a student does a quiz, they should get an increased amount of time specified in their Accommodation. View this video for more information on Accommodations.

In short, Special Access should be used on a specific Quiz or Dropbox to allow a student that has missed a deadline to access it at or until a later date. The Accommodations Tool should be given to a specific student that you know will require extended time on each Quiz or Exam in D2L.

Submitted by: Tyler J. Kron-Piatek, academic technologist, COLI