D2L Forum Session at HLC

While attending the Higher Learning Commission annual meetings in Chicago I sat in on the Desire2Learn forum session. I would estimate that there were at least 50 people in the room, maybe more like 75. I usually avoid these sessions for various reasons, but I decided to go since a couple of MnSCU friends were going and I also just thought that it had been long enough since I last heard what they have to say.

D2L always has skilled presenters for sessions of this type. None of the others are quite as skilled as CEO John Baker himself, but the sales manager for this session was also pretty good. I'll post later about some of the new features that we can expect (someday), but for now just let me say how hard it is for me to sit through demonstrations like that. I am a bit of an instant gratification kind-o-guy. It pains me to see some really cool features that they have built. The pain comes from the fact that we don't access to those new features and it's not even clear when we will have.

Managing a monstrous IMS installation for 32 institutions (okay, only 31 right now) is a huge undertaking. We cannot switch to their new version or even install an upgrade to the current version without a great deal of risk, planning, testing, and more risk. However, I WANT THOSE NEW FEATURES NOW!!

This situation strikes me in much the same way that I get so frustrated with the cell phone companies. For the cell phones, I have been a loyal customer for several years now but they treat a brand new customer who has never given them a dime better than they treat me. You have to beg to get treated as well as someone with whom they have not established an ongoing relationship. Same goes for the cable providers. Well apparently, the same goes for D2L (although for admittedly different reasons). Even though we have been customers for over two years now, a new school/system could come along tomorrow and be able to jump into the latest, shiniest, newest version of D2L with all the new bells and whistles. Meanwhile, we just get to sit here with our noses pressed against the window wondering how much fun they're having in there.

Tags: D2L Desire2Learn IMS HLC

Comments

Anonymous said…
Nice! Where you get this guestbook? I want the same script.. Awesome content. thankyou.
»
July 03, 2006 10:10 PM
Anonymous said…
This site is one of the best I have ever seen, wish I had one like this.
»
July 20, 2006 10:22 PM
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