Release Conditions

Release Conditions lock items and make them invisible until specific criteria are fulfilled. 

NOTE: Managing release conditions is an advanced skill. Make sure you practice in a sandbox course and understand their use before applying them to your class. See D2L Recommended Practices for Release Conditions.

Tools that can be associated with release conditions include:

  • Checklists
  • Content modules and topics
  • Discussion forums and topics
  • Assignments
  • Grade items and categories
  • Intelligent Agents
  • Announcements
  • Quizzes
  • Surveys

Access Release Conditions:

  1. Navigate to the course item you want to add a release condition to.
  2. From the context menu of the course item, click Edit [course item].
  3. Do one of the following:
  • To access release conditions for a discussion forum or topic, checklist, assignment submissions folder, grade item, quiz, or survey, click the Restrictions tab.
  • To access release conditions for a Announcement item, scroll to the Additional Release Conditions area.

How Release Conditions Work

Release conditions allow you to create a custom learning path through the materials in your course. When you attach a release condition to an item, students cannot see that item until they meet the associated condition. For example, you can attach a release condition to the second topic in your course’s content area that will hide that topic until students have viewed the topic before it. Or you can create a condition that requires students to view a content topic before gaining access to a quiz, or one that requires them to post to a discussion topic before they can see a content module.

Release conditions can also be added to intelligent agents to create email notifications for students. For example, you can create an intelligent agent that sends a reminder email to students who have not yet completed a required quiz or assignment in the course. This scenario is ideal for using release conditions with the "not" operator.

If you attach multiple conditions to an item, you can decide whether students must meet "any" or "all" of the conditions before they can access the item. For example, you can require students to visit the first three content topics in a unit before gaining access to an associated quiz, or just any one of the first three content topics.

Once a student meets a release condition, the condition is cleared for that student and cannot be reset. For example, if you attach a release condition to a discussion topic requiring students to achieve more than 60% on a quiz before they can access that topic, and one of your students receives 72% on the quiz but you adjust his grade to 55%, he will still be able to access the topic because he did meet the requirement at one point.

See also Release Condition Types.