The D2L & PlayPosit Relationship
This page covers important aspects of the relationship between D2L and PlayPosit. The goal is to help you better understand how the two tools work together.
How Does PlayPosit Work?
PlayPosit is a video streaming overlay. This means the videos used in PlayPosit live on YouTube, Vimeo, or Panopto, not PlayPosit. The site of your choosing (YouTube, Vimeo, or Panopto) hosts the videos. PlayPosit pulls in the video stream and allows you to build engagements within the PlayPosit Designer. The streamed videos with the overlay built over them are called Bulbs. Learn more: PlayPosit Knowledge Base: What is a Bulb? (opens in a new tab)
Now that we’ve talked about how PlayPosit works, let's discuss how it works with D2L. The bulbs you create live in the PlayPosit Dashboard, but they can be accessed within your D2L course by linking them to your D2L course. Learn more: Add a PlayPosit Bulb to D2L
When a Bulb is linked to a D2L course, several things happen.
In the D2L course:
- A link to view the Bulb is created in the Content section of the course.
- Selecting the Content link directs the user to a newly created page with the Bulb embedded.
- A grade item is created worth 100 points and is associated with the newly linked Bulb.
In the PlayPosit Dashboard:
- A new Class Folder is created that is named the same as the D2L course.
- The linked Bulb is added to the new Class Folder.
- Any students that access a Bulb in the course are automatically added to the Class Folder within the PlayPosit Dashboard. This means at first there are no students in the PlayPosit Dashboard Class Folder, but they will be added once they access the Bulb through the link in the D2L course.
A Bulb can be added to any number of D2L courses. Each time a Bulb is linked to a new course, a new set of student data is automatically collected and organized in the corresponding Class Folder on the PlayPosit Dashboard. This makes it so students in different courses will never be organized in the same Class Folder, even if they are accessing the same Bulb.
When you copy forward a D2L course that contains links to PlayPosit Bulbs, any student or instructor who first clicks on the Bulb will establish a link between the new course, the Bulb, and the PlayPosit Dashboard. PlayPosit will automatically create a new Class Folder and associate the Bulb with the new course. Learn more about D2L course copy: Copy from Course to Course.
It's important to note that any changes to a Bulb will be reflected in all courses where the Bulb is linked. For example, let’s say you use a Bulb for a 101 course and then decide it will also benefit your 201 students. You add the Bulb used in your 101 course to the 201 course. Then, later on, you decide to make the questions a bit tougher for your 201 students. However, any changes you make to the Bulb will also change for the 101 students. To make a Bulb for the 201 students, you must make a copy of the 101 bulb, modify the copy for the 201 students, delete the link to the 101 Bulb in the 201 course, and add the link for the new 201 Bulb to your D2L course.
To summarize what we’ve talked about so far, the main principle for understanding how D2L and PlayPosit work together: all the Bulbs you create live on the PlayPosit Dashboard and are reflected in the D2L course. D2L itself does not control any of the content you create on the PlayPosit Dashboard. It only links or displays what lives on the PlayPosit Dashboard. However, you can control student access to the links using D2L’s Start/End Dates and Release Conditions. Learn more: Release Conditions.
Understanding Grades
Since we now understand the basics of how D2L and PlayPosit work together, let’s talk about the grading side of the linked Bulbs in your D2L course. Like the Bulbs themselves, Bulb scores live on the PlayPosit Dashboard and are reflected in the D2L Gradebook. Grades are determined based on the percentage of the points earned. PlayPosit calls the interface with student grades the Monitor.
For example, if I have a Bulb with three multiple choice questions each worth one point, and a student earns two out of three points, they will receive a 67% in the D2L Gradebook. The point value or portion of the grade in D2L does not matter. Students will automatically receive the equivalent percentage of points they earn. So using the example above, if the Bulb’s D2L grade item is worth 10 points, then the student above will receive 6.7 points out of 10. If the Bulb’s D2L grade item is worth 6 points, then the student will receive 4 points.
Furthermore, there are two different ways grades are synced between D2L and PlayPosit: automatically and manually. If interactions within a Bulb are all auto-graded (multiple choice, check all, fill-in-the-blank), then when a student completes the Bulb, the percentage of the points earned is automatically sent to the D2L Gradebook, and the student receives the percentage of the points earned. Bulbs with manually-graded interactions (free responses and some discussions) are more complicated.
Bulbs with manually-graded interactions will have the grade sent to D2L in two stages. First, any points earned from auto-graded interactions will be automatically sent to the D2L Gradebook. The final grade will not be reflected in D2L until the manually-graded portion of the bulb is graded by the instructor and the Sync Grades button is selected in the PlayPosit Dashboard. This can be troubling for students who will only see a portion of their grade in D2L at first.
For example, let's say a Bulb has one multiple-choice question worth one point and one free-response question worth three points. If a student scores one point for the multiple choice question, and the free response question has yet to be manually graded, then the D2L Gradebook will show the student scored a 25% until the manually-graded free response question is graded and the Sync Grades button is selected. If the student scored three of three points for the free response question and one point for the multiple choice question, then once the Sync Grades button is selected, the student will see a 100% reflected in the D2L Gradebook.
Be sure to let students know ahead of time that their final score will not be accurate in the D2L Gradebook until a specific date on which you will have all of the manual grading completed and synced. Doing so will significantly reduce students panicking and emailing you about a low score on Bulbs.
One last note about the relationship between D2L and PlayPosit and how grading works between the two: always make any manual adjustments to grades in the PlayPosit Dashboard and then select the Sync Grades button. If you make manual adjustments in the D2L Gradebook, they will be automatically overwritten by the grades on the PlayPosit Dashboard.
Learn more: Monitoring Bulbs in PlayPosit (opens in a new tab)