Sometimes your learning management system just doesn’t provide the large-scale bulk editing or bulk creating options you need it to. So, when you need to make big changes to a course, it can seem like you’re going to be clicking away all day.

A few days ago, I had an instructor who wanted to convert all fifteen of his discussion assignments from whole-class discussions to group-based discussions, and the student worker I would normally delegate this task to was out of the office. I was faced with what would normally be a half day of tedium, creating the group-based discussions, copying the prompts from fifteen discussion assignments into seven group-restricted discussions per assignment, and re-linking the group forums in the modules.

Fortunately, this wasn’t my first rodeo. I got my start in instructional design as a student worker myself, and I found a massive time-saving technique that not only dramatically cuts down the time these things take, but also reduces the opportunity for errors. This project took me about 25 minutes.

I’m going to share the secret to my success–a way of batching these repetitive tasks together.

In order for this to work, you will have to have an understanding of browser tabs. Lynda.com, an online course site with thousands of training guides, has a great tutorial on using tabs in Firefox. DePaul users can access Lynda here. For non-DePaul users, Lynda.com offers monthly or annual billing plans for membership and access. They do, however, offer a free 10-day trial for those who do not have access through their school or office.

Once inside Lynda.com, search for “Up and Running with the Firefox Browser” and then find the video on using tabs.

Step 1: Make sure you have D2L open in its own window without any other tabs. Note: you can do this process is Firefox, Google Chrome, or Safari.

Step 2: For every quiz, discussion, content item, etc you need to edit, open in it in its own tab.

Step 3: Start “the loop”

1. Do the first step in the process in the first tab. This can be selecting a checkbox, going to a different tab in settings, or even just scrolling to the bottom of the page where the setting is. But only do one thing at a time.
2. Use the keyboard shortcut CTRL+Tab (or Command+Tab on macs) to move to the next window.
3. Your mouse should still be positioned in the correct place to do the first step in the new tab. Repeat the first step in the second tab.
4. Continue alternating between clicking and using CTRL+Tab to move to the next tab until you’ve completed the first step on all tabs and returned to the first tab.
5. Repeat the process for the next step.

Step 4: When you’ve finished all steps, verify that everything is correct in each tab as you close them.

Here is the batching process in action, tackling the problem above of having to copy a discussion prompt into several group discussions. This has not been sped up or altered.

This cuts down the time it takes to do repetitive tasks dramatically. You don’t want to wait for the page to load on each step, because you’re working in other tabs while the page is loading. And for each step in the process, you only have to move your mouse once for all the items you’re editing.

In the video, I’m using a couple additional keyboard shortcuts to make my life easier–CTRL+Click (Command+Click on Mac) to open tabs in a new tab and CTRL+V (Command+V on Mac) to paste the prompt.

In addition to making the work faster, this batching reduces the opportunity for error. If I need to change three settings in 20 quizzes, there’s a pretty good chance I’m going to start getting lazy and miss a setting somewhere around quiz 10 if I do them one at a time. But if I follow the above loop, I know I’m doing the exact same process for each quiz.

This kind of batching works for almost any repetitive task in D2L. Need to change quiz settings for 20 quizzes? Need to set a new homepage for 10 classes? Need to add due dates to 8 Dropboxes?

The minutes you spend in the learning management system add up. The less time you need to devote to mindless clicking, the more time you can spend on more important things.