D2L's interface has never been intuititive (Blackboard had the best I've seen so far, out of Intrakal, Blackboard, WebCT, and D2L), their chat has been unreliable, and their support spotty. I vote for finding out what the best product out there is; if it's D2L, so be it.
Anonymous said…
I have worked with both D2L and Blackboard. I agree with Jess Lourey D2L is terrible to figure out intuitively, lots of hidden menus. I find myself continually relearning processes for doing specific tasks if I am not doing them on a daily bases. I give D2L a “D-“ in user friendliness. The only thing we must be careful of is that if we were to switch to another vendor the transfer of our current course work needs to be fairly seamless.
The real answer to make people happy is choices. In my graduate work (all on-line) Indian State University, faculty had a choice between WebCT or Blackboard. I never had a class that was not Blackboard!
I truly appreciate this opportunity for comment, MNSCU could care less, they will just dump low bid on us if possible.
Anonymous said…
There have been some great advances made with lessor know applications...take a look at CourseCruiser by TimeCruiser...a company which has won the Codie Award two years in a row, 2008 and 2009...their Saas model makes them hands down way more affordable than what Bb is soaking it's clients for...seems to be a solid opportunity for legacy WebCT customers still holding onto CE4.1 or 6.0 before they are forced to make a major investment in hardware or hosting costs for Bb 9.0 or 10.0.
For several years now I have railed against the use of ed2go courses when they are affiliated with a college or university. During my time on the Minnesota Online Council I was especially adamant against the listing of the ed2go courses at the MnOnline website as though they were endorsed courses from a member institution. There is no way that I think the brand should be diluted by including courses like this in our offerings. Why not? Glad you asked. NOTE: most of this post was written after I discovered that my own school had recently signed on with ed2go. This saddens me to no end since I spent the past five y ears railing against the use of ed2go in Minnesota Online and our colleges. Our VP in that division assures me that they will do what they can to not harm our reputation for quality online offerings - and I believe that, I'm just not sure how much of that we can actually control. I waited a couple of weeks before posting this to see whether my opinion would be changed by
As many of you know, I am always interested in the comings and goings of the LMS wars. Who's leaving Blackboard and what are they going to? I rarely have to ask the opposite question - who's migrating to Blackboard from a non-Blackboard platform - because it almost NEVER happens. The latest one to catch my eye was the University of Surrey in the UK. Here's their press release about choosing D2L . Nowhere in the release do they mention what platform they've been on - but it doesn't take much effort to find this on their current website: So, yes, this is another school switching from Blackbeard to Desire2Learn. I find portions of their press release to be revealing about their previous experience with BlackCT Vista. "A new hi-tech system is being introduced at the University of Surrey to enable students to learn on computers and mobile devices via a more personalised platform ." "The new Virtual Learning Environment (VLE), replacing and vastly improving
The Committee on Education and Labor in the U.S. House of Representatives passed the "College Opportunity and Affordability Act" (H.R. 4137 ) on November 15, 2007. This means we are nearing the end of the long road leading to reauthorizing the Higher Education Act (HEA). The House committee bill now joins the bill passed by the U.S. Senate (S.1642) in July 2007. House link: H.R. 4137 , go to part H, section 496-A Senate link: S. 1642 , go to part G, section 491 (formerly 496) At some point the language differences between the House and Senate will need to be hammered out. However, with regard to accreditation concerns for distance education, the House committee bill is identical to the Senate bill. The current language would allow college and university accrediting agencies to address the quality of a school’s distance education offerings without the need to create separate standards, procedures or policies related to distance education (for a while this looked to be the dire
Comments
Mike Sakowski
The real answer to make people happy is choices. In my graduate work (all on-line) Indian State University, faculty had a choice between WebCT or Blackboard. I never had a class that was not Blackboard!
I truly appreciate this opportunity for comment, MNSCU could care less, they will just dump low bid on us if possible.