Desire2Blog

From what I could see, the D2L reporting tool in version 8 is far more powerful than in version 7. One nice thing is that it creates reports out of a data warehouse rather than the live production data (at least I think that is what he said). One advantage of that is that we can run complicated reports without compromising the performance of the production server where students are taking quizzes and faculty are creating content. The number of reports available appears to be quite comprehensive. The tool also includes a great number of filters that can be employed to narrow the report to particular user groups, or other particular factors that allow you to focus your report on a particular group. For example, maybe you want to get a report on the number of failed logins. You can do that. Maybe you only want to know how many failed logins there were for student users. You can do that. Maybe you only want to know how many failed student logins occured on Sunday night between 8 and midnig...

My opinion about the built-in blog tool in D2L is the following - YAWN! It doesn't really look like a blog, or at least not much. The blog entry creation interface isn't all that complicated, but to me it doesn't look anything like Blogger, Wordpress, or any of the other blog tools out there. Maybe it doesn't need to look like the others, but since there are 70 million bloggers out there (or pick your own number) and they are used to a certain look-and-feel, it seems counter-intuitive to make a tool that doesn't "behave" in a similar manner to what people are already using. Also, the blog display to others is not at all "pretty." It kind of looks like a series of D2L News boxes one on top of the other. The example I saw was not attractive but maybe it can be customized to look better. I know that looks are not everything, but I was personally turned off by the look and feel of this tool. It won't make me leave my other blogging tools anytime ...

The competencies tool in Desire2Learn is a very ambitious undertaking. It looks incredibly powerful, it appears to be well thought out, and it appears to have more functionality than we are ready for. However, that's fine with me since I prefer to have more power than I need rather than less. It is somewhat difficult to describe this tool. Whatever you choose to say first about it is probably not the most important feature. Here is my concern about this tool: it has so many facets, so many possibilties, and operates at so many levels; that we are going to need a huge amount of training in order to utilize this tool beyond the most basic level. This tool is all about assessing student learning, but it is not a quiz tool, or a grading tool, or anything like that. It is a tool that has the capabilities to do what we have to do in higher ed, but mostly are not doing --- assessment of student learning from when they enter our doors until they leave. The problem is that this type of asse...

At the Minnesota e-Learning Summit I spent about 40 minutes with Stephan Meyer of D2L taking a look at the inside of D2L version 8. I've blogged previously about his presentation at the Higher Learning Commission meeting where he talked about version 8 tools, but he didn't show a live demo at that meeting. He showed me the following: Course export tool (yes, it really does exist) Competencies tool LiveRoom (much much more than a chat room) Learning Object Respository with advanced metadata Reporting tool (much further developed, allowing granular reporting) Blog tool (but no wiki) New copy component tool (much more powerful) Search tool integrated into most of the tools Redesigned (and improved) HTML editor (and works with Firefox!!) Improved survey tool (you can actually export your data - finally!!) One of the biggest fears that users have about the new version is what will happen to the user interface. The answer is almost nothing. Almost all of the changes are in new tool...

The love affair and pursuant honeymoon between educators and Learning Objects appears to be pretty much over. It's becoming more obvious to me that we haven't found much real value in this concept during the past several years. Here's what some very smart people are saying: Random Walk in Learning: (Albert Ip, 5/15/06) "I have been a strong advocate of learning technology standards such as SCORM, I am now starting to question whether these standards actually deliver any value to the learning community." eLearn Magazine: (Michael Feldstein) "I believe the term "learning object" has become harmful. It hides the same old, bad lecture model behind a sexy buzz phrase. If we're really serious about stimulating learning, then we should think in terms of something like a cognitive catalyst . Rather than just serving up digital content and assuming the students will absorb it, we should be creating artifacts that function like enzymes for the intellec...

The Academic Services Workgroup of Minnesota Online is looking for input about managing and using the Learning Object Repository (LOR) within D2L. I would like to HEAR your comments using a new tool called Vaestro . Vaestro creates threaded discussion boards of voice recordings. It's easy to use. Check out the questions at the link below. Leave me an Audio Comment. - or at least check out what others are saying. For those of you who are audio-challenged, you can reply to this blog post (leave a text comment here) with your thoughts about any of the following: Are faculty anxious to start using an LOR? Why would they care and why should they care? Which is a more important use of an LOR, the sharing of learning content or the proper storage and management of all the electronic files, or are they both super important or not at all? Whose job is it to create and manage the learning objects and the repository? Where should the responsibility lie for all of this? What role can/should l...

I received this email today from Angel: Burning the midnight oil worrying about the future of your Learning Management System? Vendor consolidation has left you with fewer options as unknowns increase. Take a moment to consider this: It's not too late to explore options. ANGEL is a collaborative LMS that doesn't require the resource investment of a pure open source deployment. ANGEL is different. Our approach is simple. We Listen: Hundreds of ANGEL features suggested by our customer community. We Respond:> 75% of service requests responded to and resolved in less than 24 hours. We Exceed Expectations: Your success is a measure of our success. Don't let fear of change stop you. Changing LMS vendors may seem overwhelming, but the vast majority of our customers have found that change is quite easy . We have a track record of simple, quick migration and powerful conversion tools to make it happen.   eom (emphases mine) This brings up a few questions for me: Exactly what i...

Screen shot of Moodle

Last week I facilitated an online discussion series with about 15 educators from the U.S., Canada, and Taiwan. The forum was conducted using Moodle (open source IMS) as part of the UW-Madison Distance Education Certificate Program. Here are a few observations about my one week experience with Moodle. One thing that I must use as a qualifier is that we were not using, nor did we have access to, all of the tools in Moodle. I also did not have access to the administrative side of Moodle so I can't be sure of what some of the other options/settings might be. Moodle does not have a "fancy" interface at all. Very few graphics (again, maybe it can be customized with more graphics) and very much text based. D2L can be made very visually appealling (caveat: all that eye of the beholder stuff) while Moodle was clearly built to be clean, efficient, and accessible. Moodle has a built-in wiki. I love wikis and use them all the time. The Moodle wiki is not as nice as most of the stand-...

Just when things seemed to be going rather smoothly, these three messages are posted in the online faculty lounge during the last 24 hours about quiz problems in D2L: 1) Beware all, I have one exam in one of my classes where NONE of the scores showed up in the gradebook. However students took the exam, and the scores are visible in the quiz's grades, just did not port to the gradebook. I asked Susan B. what I might have done wrong and she can find nothing wrong or that I forgot (checkboxes, etc.), she said even the gurus of D2L and such can not explain this. Gremlins in the D2L software. Just keep an eye out in your courses, such as if a student says they took a quiz and a score is not in the gradebook-- their score might be listed in the individual quiz's scores. I also have had T/F questions showing up with bizarre unreadable formatting on tests, yet in the quiz question database the questions look just fine. 2) I had myriad problems with quizzes last semester. What a pain af...