D2L Seating Charts

Seating Charts enable you to assign students to seats representative of your classroom and track student participation on a session-by-session basis.  

Seating Chart integrates with both the Locations and Calendar tools. There are currently Locations available for classroom sizes that include 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 and 100 seats.  

Once a seating chart has been created, you can attach it to a recurring event in your course calendar. This enables you to hold sessions in your course and track students’ comments and participation quickly and easily.  

Activate Seating Chart Location 

1. Select Course Tools on the Navbar, then Course Admin 
2. Select Seating Chart 
3. Select Manage Locations and select one of the listed Seating Charts (10 Seats, 20 Seats, etc.). Hint: Choose a Location with more seats than you need to allow greater flexibility in arranging the rows of students. 
4. Select the Set Active button 

Establish Seating Chart 

1. Select Manage Seating Charts 
2. Select Create a Chart 
3. Enter a Chart Name (i.e. BUAD 2280 class), Location (i.e. 20 Seats) and the Attendees for this seating chart 
4. Select Save 
5. If you wish to change the design of your seating chart, select More Actions and choose Manage Layout to update the chart layout to your liking 
6. To assign students to the seating chart, scroll down and drag them to a position on the chart, or select Assign All. You can then use the More Actions options of Randomize or Remove All to place or remove the students from the chart 

Create Calendar Events that are integrated with Seating Chart 

1. Under Other Tools, select Calendar 
2. Select Create Event button 
3. Enter the Event Title (i.e. BUAD 2280 class sessions) and a description if necessary 
4. Select the Attendees 
5. Under When, select the dates and times. Note: If you are entering a reoccurring event, such as class periods, select the first day that this event will occur and then select the Add Recurrence button and complete the information. 
6. Select the dropdown arrow under Location and select the Location you wish to use 
7. Be sure to check the box located next to Use Seating Chart 
8. Select the Create button at the bottom of the screen 

Edit Seating Chart Filters 

1. Use Seating Chart filters to facilitate individual and group participation tracking per session. Customize the filters according to your preferences and grading scheme. From inside a seating chart, select the Edit Filter Settings icon to modify filters.  
2. Filters allow you to use the overall attendance, cold call, and participation scores in a session to highlight students that match custom criteria. On this screen you can:  
   1. Change the name of the filters that appear on the seating chart view 
   2. Set the attendance filter to highlight Present or Absent students 
   3. Set the cold call and participation filters to highlight the bottom overall, top overall, bottom of the session, or top of the session students 
   4. Set the number of students to display when the cold call and participation filters are selected 
3. If you make changes to the Filters, select Save 

Use Seating Chart in a Session 

1. From the Seating Chart window select Return to Events button and select the calendar event you wish to use 
2. Before you can add participation points, you must mark their attendance.  The easiest way to mark attendance is to mark all students as present and then manually go in and select the students that are not present.   
3. To do this select the drop-down arrow button under More Actions and select Set All Present. All students will appear with a blue background. 
4. Next, select the students on the seating chart that are absent. Under Attendance select the Edit icon to modify attendance. You have the option to mark that student as an unexcused absence or excused absence.  The students that are absent will appear with a gray background and a small icon in the upper right-hand corner.  
5. Now that everyone’s attendance has been noted, you can begin noting participation and cold call points, as well as any other session comments 
   1. Participation Points – Participation points are given out when a student voluntarily asks a question or offers comments/feedback in class. Select student and select – or + when a student voluntarily participates. The student’s background color will change from blue to green and you will see a number in the upper right corner signifying the number of times that individual has participated.  
   2. Cold Calls Points – Cold Call Points are used to track the number of times you request a response or comment from a student in class who has not volunteered to participate. Select student and select – or + when a student responds to a Cold Call question. The Cold Call icon appears beside the student’s name on the seating chart when you mark a student who has been cold-called during the session. This helps you track users you have called on in sessions. 
6. When the session has been completed select Set Session Completed button to save the session entries. If you need to return to the session to make any changes, select the Resume Session button to continue with your edits. 
7. Select the Return to Events button to view overall session statistics. Statistics will appear to the far right of your screen.  
   1. Overall Attendance, Participation, and Cold Call statistics for the entire class are found at the top of the pane 
   2. Student statistics are found below and can be viewed by simply selecting the students’ name 
      1. Select a specific session to view details 
      2. Or view pane to the far right to view overall statistics for all sessions graded 

NOTES: 

• Green highlight indicates students who are achieving or exceeding the Positive Threshold value. This is the target participation score expected from students in a session.  

• Red highlight indicates students who are below the Negative Threshold value. 

• Yellow highlight indicates students who are below the Positive Threshold value, but are equal to or above the Negative Threshold value. 

• Select the Settings icon to edit the Positive and Negative Threshold values