Work to Do Widget in D2L

Overview

The Work To Do widget provides learners with a summary of assigned learning activities from all their courses that are overdue or have an upcoming due date or end date. You can add the widget to your organization homepage to aggregate data from all courses, and to course homepages to show only due and overdue learning activities from the course.

Q. The widget appears out of sync with the Content Experience. (E.g. A student has completed an activity, but it still shows in the widget. I’ve added a new items with a date, but it hasn’t appeared in the widget. I’ve updated the date on an activity, but my students are still seeing the original date.) What’s wrong?
A. Allow 2 minutes for updates to appear in the widget, or have learners clear their cache to see updates immediately.

Q. I know there’s an overdue item, but the learners don’t see it. Why isn’t it showing up in the Overdue section of the widget?
A. There are three reasons an overdue item might not show in the widget. It’s either outside of the range set by the configuration variable (defaulted to 12 weeks in the past), it has been completed by the learner, or its End Date has passed. If an item is overdue, but it also has an End Date that has passed, the item no longer appears as Work to Do. This is true for the End Date of the individual activity or the entire course.

Q. Does the widget support Special Access overrides?
A. Yes. If a student has a different due/end date due to Special Access, the student will see their individual date in the widget.

Q. What if there’s an activity due soon, but it’s start date hasn’t come yet?
A. If the course is active and started but the activity’s start date is in the future, the activity will appear in the Upcoming section of the widget, but it will not be clickable and it will have a label to indicate its start date until the date has arrived. If the entire course has not yet started, the activity will not appear in the widget.

Q. What about Course due dates and end dates?
A. Course end dates do not appear in the widget, but courses with due dates assigned via Learning Groups do appear.

Q. What’s the difference between this widget and how work to do is displayed in Pulse?
A. Pulse displays work to do in a more graphical week-by-week view, and it doesn’t explicitly call out overdue work. Also, Pulse includes Calendar Events in a separate tab, and Pulse allows users to add their own tasks to the work to do view. On Homepages, you’d need to use the separate Calendar and Tasks widgets for these items.

Q. What’s the difference between this widget and other widgets like Updates, Calendar, and Tasks?
A. Each widget has its own unique benefits. For instance, the Updates widget includes items like ungraded assignments and quizzes, making it a more useful tool for instructors, whereas the Work To Do widget is geared towards learners. The Calendar widget does not display course activities with due dates when on the Org Homepage, but it does display activities with due dates when on the Course Homepage. So, the Calendar and Work To Do widgets can live in harmony on the Org Homepage, but they may display some duplicate items when both widgets are on the Course Homepage. And lastly, the Tasks widget shows tasks manually created by the user for the user. Unlike the activities displayed in the Work To Do widget, Tasks are not assigned by an instructor.

From: https://help.d2l.msu.edu/msu-docs/course-space-creation-and-customization/adding-and-moving-widgets-on-your-homepage/work-to-do-widget