Missed Opportunity

At the time that MnSCU adopted Desire2Learn (D2L) as our IMS there was some conversation about developing a unique system-wide branding for the tool. This conversation never really went anywhere and soon everyone was busy with installation, conversion, training, and so on. I think that was a tremendous opportunity that we missed to build some brand identity for Minnesota Online and MnSCU.

Ohio State uses D2L but calls it Carmen. Excerpt from syllabus article: "To create identification with the new learning environment, TELR branded D2L at Ohio State “Carmen,” a reference to the OSU alma mater song, “Carmen, Ohio.” The TELR visual design team came up with an appealing graphic identity, revising it in response to feedback from students, faculty and staff. The Carmen icon is now instantly identifiable across campus, and anchors not just the CMS interface, but also our campus communications and advertising campaign. We believe this attention to brand has been a key component of fostering acceptance of the new system."

Similarly, the University of Wisconsin chose a brand of Learn@UW. This branding is used only at the Madison campus, not throughout the UW system. River Falls, Stout and Superior campuses have basically created their own versions of the "Learn@UW" name, but many UW campuses seem to not be embracing the branding opportunity at all.

My attempt at building some name recognition for our campus use of D2L has had mild success, but not what I had hoped. I wanted to co-brand our IMS as LSC Online and Minnesota Online. You can see the full banner image here that we use in D2L. My goal was to have people refer to the system as LSC Online and to also realize that we are part of the larger system of MnOnline. The problem is that so many faculty and staff began referring to the system as "D2L" rather than LSC Online that we never had a good chance at developing our own name recognition instead of that of the vendor. Clearly, this represents confusion for some people. Now we have a new logo at LSC that we need to find a way to integrate into our online offerings and LSC Online branding. Maybe this is another opportunity to develop some unique name awareness, but maybe it's just too late for that. It drives me nuts when we miss opportunities like this.

Technorati Tags: ,
Creative Commons Licence
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons (Attribution) license.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ed2Go is NOT Higher Education

Image
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...
Read more

Another Switch from Blackboard to Desire2Learn

Image
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...
Read more

New Netiquette Guidelines for LSC Online

The LSC Online Programs Advisory Committee decided to craft a set of netiquette guidelines that would serve as the recommended list that faculty could use for their online courses. It's not a full policy or anything like that, just an attempt to give them some useful information to post in their online courses. Faculty are free to use them, change them, add to them, not use them at all, or whatever. The list is posted in the LSC wiki . This project was taken on because many of our online faculty had been using a particular web resource for many years as a netiquette guide. That web page began carrying less-than-attractive banner ads and quite frankly was always more about general online netiquette rather than focused on online learning. There are quite a few other sets of guidelines out there, but many of them are rather lengthy or include items that we don't feel are needed, and occasionally we just disagreed with them. So, we decided to write a relatively short list of our ow...
Read more