Desire2Blog

 Blackology Goes Chapter 11 Back in the day I spilled a lot of ink writing about Blackboard , aka Blackborg, aka Blackbeard, aka BlackCT (after they bought the WebCT LMS), aka BlackAngel (after they bought the Angel LMS). After Anthology bought Blackboard back in 2021, it seems to me that Blackology is an apt moniker. Full disclosure: I was a D2L customer for 9 years (2003-2012) and and a D2L employee for 13 years (2012-2025), now retired. Anthology filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy a couple weeks ago . Many good writers/thinkers have posted their thoughts in various forums. Here is a sampling: Phil Hill of OnEdTech: Anthology Declares Bankruptcy, Blackboard to Remain as the Core Subscribe to OnEdTech Phil Hill of OnEdTech: Anthology's Chapter 11 Bankruptcy by the Numbers Justin Ménard of ListEdTech: Anthology’s Chapter 11 Filing: Breaking Up to Refocus Subscribe to ListEdTech Al Essa on AI-Learn Insights: What Can We Learn From Anthology's Demis...

I put this blog in mothballs while working at D2L. As of August 1, 2025, I'm officially retired. So, expect the occasional post about D2L, other LMS platforms, news about the world of online learning and the more semi-frequent rants.

Taking advice from Barney, I'm going to nip it in the bud. This will likely be the last post at Desire2Blog, at least as it is currently configured and at this address. Maybe there will be a new and different version of D2B in the future - maybe not. As such, no new comments will be accepted for publication on the blog, because 1) I no longer care to moderate them, and 2) because one person can only be called an @$$hat and jackhole so many times (on a 4 year old post that I no longer care about) before they choose to ignore the whole thing. It was fun for quite a while. The site will remain here as long as I have some control over that option, but I might get hit by a bus tomorrow (Hurray! That jackhole deserves it!!), in which case all bets are off. A few stats: 1st post was on March 16, 2006 - a total of 360 posts were made - about 200,000 page views over 6 years - six of the top 10 posts (most views) have the word "Blackboard" in the title.

This post is probably not very important (are they ever?). But I felt compelled to point out a few facts about Desire2Learn. This compelsion (that's a Barney Fife word ) was fueled by recent news articles about D2L, like this one: The Globe and Mail published this article about a new COO at D2L. Notice in the headline that they call D2L a "startup." I'm not sure why they choose to use that term. How long exactly is a company called a startup? D2L was founded in 1999. I guess that means that they'll be celebrating 13 years in business sometime this year. They currently have more than 600 clients and six million users. There are nearly 400 D2L employees located around the globe. I have personally been a part of the D2L user community for over 8 years. Doesn't feel like a startup to me.

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...

Someone I connect with online and consider to be an essential player in my personal learning network is Laura Gibbs, faculty at the University of Oklahoma. Laura and I are mainly connected through Google Plus as well as a Yammer network. Both of those are fairly new additions to the various learning networks that I attempt to engage in. Laura teaches completely online and is one of the least satisfied D2L users that I know. Most of Laura's issues with the D2L Learning environment appear to me to be things that would also be an issue (IMO) with almost all LMS platforms; primarily related to the closed nature of traditional LMS and lack of true Web 2.0-ish tools. From my reading of her posts, she is also dissatisfied with the lack of a vibrant community of D2L users for sharing and learning. Laura has been engaged in the past few days in making her courses ready for the start of the new semester. I asked her permission to cross-post some of her G+ posts here in an effort to reach ...

While "attending" the D2L Users Conference, FUSION, in Denver this month, there was no other topic mentioned as much as the Action Analytics project that is currently under development. During the Product Launch presentation, John Baker and Jeremy Auger brought Brian C up on the stage to run through a little demo. I was expecting to see the continued build out of a project that was started at MnSCU a couple of years ago, and that's exactly what I saw. I had the pleasure of working on this project with Al Essa and a few other folks while both Al and I were employed within MnSCU. Several things have changed since then: Al now works for D2L, I now work for nobody, and MnSCU killed the development project of what was easily the most innovative thing that has been done there in many years. What we called Action Analytics at MnSCU, is called the Student Success System at D2L. However, before I go on, let me make it clear that although there are many similarities between the two...

Last week I sort of attended the D2L Users Conference (D2L11), also called FUSION, in Denver, Colorado. I love Denver and the surrounding area, but since I grew up in Cheyenne I've never been too impressed by the whole "Mile High City" stuff. Cheyenne is over 6000 feet in elevation, which I believe is higher than one measly mile. I was a presenter at the Unconference (emceed by Kyle Mackie) that preceded the main conference, and I closed the evening with a little ditty titled "If I had a Beer..." This unconventional presentation was half-serious and half not-so-much. The basic premise was that a nickle is not really worth very much, so the whole "If I had a nickle for every time I've heard that" thing just doesn't seem to add up for me. However, if I had a beer for each of those times - then I'd really have something of value. For example - the bit started with the following. If I had a beer... for every stinking time I've clicked a li...

The current (5/18/2011) Wikipedia entry for Blackbeard (aka Edward Teach) is most excellent. It states: "A shrewd and calculating leader, (Blackbeard) Teach avoided the use of force, relying instead on his fearsome image to elicit the response he desired from those he robbed. Contrary to the modern-day picture of the traditional tyrannical pirate, he commanded his vessels with the permission of their crews and there are no known accounts of his ever having harmed or murdered those he held captive." With just a few slips of the fingers on the keyboard, it could easily be: "A shrewd and calculating vendor, (Blackboard) Learn avoided the use of force, relying instead on its fearsome image to elicit the response they desired from those they robbed. Contrary to the modern-day picture of the traditional tyrannical pirate, they commanded their clients with the permission of their crews and there are no known accounts of ever having harmed or murdered those they held capt...

Last week I had the opportunity to chat with John Baker, CEO of D2L for 30 minutes or so. I was telling him how I am frequently contacted by various people about two main questions: 1) my experiences over the past 7.5+ years as a D2L client (now ended, unless an unemployed person can still be a "client"). 2) my opinions about the future of D2L, especially from an investment perspective. In particular, these questions tend to fall into two main categories: => a) do I think D2L is going to sell out to the highest bidder (this Q has been around for all of those 7.5+ yrs.), and => b) is D2L preparing to issue an IPO (initial public offering of stock) and go public? John and I talked at length about these things. I told him that the speculation about an IPO seemed to be especially hot right now. He told me that this is not something that they have even talked about, and that he has no interest in even looking at that possibility at this time. For a company l...

An LMS company with a code name of LPO Co. is for sale , according to the Wavepoint website. I'm pretty sure that it's not the London Philharmonic Orchestra LMS, and I'm also pretty sure that it isn't Desire2Learn. There are always rumors (okay, often, not always) about whether D2L owners are going to take the money and run. At first blush, I think it's pretty easy to see why some people might jump to the conclusion that D2L is the unnamed company on this website, based on some of the sales info related to the mystery company, such as: "a private North American based technology firm" (notice they don't say a U.S. company, so Canada comes to mind, and D2L is privately held). "a leading provider of Learning Management System (LMS) technology with prestigious clients" (D2L is generally considered to be the #2 LMS company (at least size-wise) and all of their user base considers themselves to be prestigious, of course). " Since 2001, LPO Co...

Why wasn't I invited to the party? There must have been a Blackboard patent burning party, and I'm feeling pretty badly about not being invited. Seems strange that I can't find any news about the party on the Internets. Y'all did a pretty good job of keeping this celebration a secret. Or did we just let the '138 patent slip into the ether as if it never happened? 'Tis a shame if we missed an excellent opportunity for fun and frolic. I'm referring to the Blackboard (Alcorn) '138 patent . You might remember that they had this little flap with Desire2Learn that played out in a Texas courtroom and at the USPTO, and at the Software Freedom Law Center, and on a couple thousands blogs, including this one. However, it's been really hard to get any substantiated news about the status of the Blackboard (Alcorn) '138 patent since about March, 2010. That's when Jeff Bohrer posted info about Blackboard's last 30 days "to appeal the USPTOs deci...

Over the years I've done quite a few workshops that included some sort of reference to using comic strips in online courses, either as part of the content provided by faculty or as part of the student assignments. This narrated slidecast is a short (5 min. 40 sec.) description of some of the ways that comics can be used to pump up the creativity in an online course. Using Comics in D2L Using Comics in D2L from Barry Dahl

I recently gave a short presentation about using custom home pages for courses taught using Desire2Learn. D2L Custom Homepages by Barry Dahl from Barry Dahl Do you know what web pages are "framebusters" if you try to embed them into the D2L course home page? Check out slide 5. Do you know where you can easily make custom widgets for your course home page? Check out slide 9. Please share in the comments if you do something different and useful on your course home page.

My first look at Intelligent Agents in Desire2Learn. Having spent some time working on a Data Analytics project for MnSCU that would have served as an early alert system for online students not making good progress, I've been curious to see how deep the functionality runs in the D2L Intelligent Agents (IA) tool. The short answer is that there's some basic functionality there that might prove beneficial to some users, but the tool falls short of being a full featured Army soldier (you know, Be All That You Can Be!). (CC-by Flickr photo by Sarah G... ) I've recorded a narrated slide show that will illustrate the basics. In the slides you'll see: (a) where to access the IA tool, (b) how to create a new agent, (c) how to write a customized (sort of) email to be triggered by the agent, (d) how to schedule (or not) the agent to run when you want it to, (e) what happens when the agent is run, (f) and some pros and cons about the IA tool. Click the green triangle Play button...

Even though I'm happy with my decision to not attend the D2L User Conference this year, that doesn't mean that I wasn't interested in the goings on, nor did it mean that I didn't miss the many friends who were in attendance. I followed the Twitter stream from the conference in an effort to stay somewhat in the know. Here's a chronological listing of selected tweets. Desire2Learn_PR : Boat cruises, great food, connecting with colleagues… FUSION 2010 is off to a fabulous start! http://bit.ly/17POaR ( expand ) # D2L10 ajwms : At # d2l10 . Last time to see @140universityElluminate as sponsor, I guess http://twitpic.com/24h5u9 tabrown : Lots of fun catching up with folks at the #unD2L conference this evening # D2L10 ConnectYard : launching our new learning tool today for #d2l that integrates FB, TW & TM into courses. Stop by our booth at # d2l10 for more details! ajwms : Has anybody been able to get their iPad connected to hotel wireless at # D2L10 ...