Blog Post Week #5 Desire2Learn

Evaluating Desire2Learn as a Learning Management System

Many school boards in Ontario have purchased licenses for Desire2Learn (D2L) and are urging teachers to use this as their learning management system.  In my experience throughout the past few years teachers have used a variety of websites as their LMS such as edmodo, moodle, and schoology. Our school board does not want teachers using different websites as this requires students to access many different sites for their four classes.  Another reason is that the use of technology should be non invasive for students, meaning their information should be protected and their contact information should not be given to third party businesses.  I have recently made the switch from schoology to D2L and throughout this blog post I will evaluate D2L using some of the criteria from the checklist for evaluating digital tools created by Chan (2011).  

Cost

Desire2Learn is not free and the school board must purchase a licence to provide teachers and students with access.  Although I am unsure of the cost for the school board I would imagine it is quite hefty to be able to provide access to some 15,000 users board wide.  Schoology is a free LMS which makes it quite appealing as far as cost is concerned.  

Reliability and Support

Our board office has two employees who provide support for D2L services, they are former teachers. All teachers had the opportunity to attend a half day workshop on how to use the LMS, and there are often drop in days where one of the D2L support employees are at our school and we can ask questions and get their help as needed.  My experience with support staff has been excellent, they are able to reply to emails very quickly and they can see your course and walk you through anything you need assistance with.  When teachers use a LMS of their choice they do not get any support which makes D2L the winner in this category. 

Evaluation

Desire2Learn has the capability of having built in quizzes that students take online.  This is a convenient was to have formative or summative assessments and provide students with timely feedback.  Assignments can also be submitting through a drop box.   Another great advantage is the mobile marking app for ipads which allows teachers to hand write feedback on submitted work. 

User Interface

Aesthetics are very  important in being able to engage teenage students in using a technology.  Desire2Learn is not a very attractive LMS, I find it much less engaging than schoology.  Teachers can customize their class pages but it is not easy to do and without some training the average person wouldn't know how to do this.  Even with customized themes, the layout of D2L could be improved.  

Integration

Desire2Learn can integrate gizmo simulations (found at explorelearning)  and activities from the Ontario educational resource bank (OERB).  This makes planning convenient when teachers are planning on using these resources in their lessons.  D2L also allows teachers to easily embed video/audio and weblinks to external sites.  

Conclusion

I feel there are some benefits to using D2L as a LMS but I am still unsure that it is the best choice.   I think school boards could take better advantage of free LMS and spend money in the budget on providing more mobile devices to each school.  It will also be easier to further evaluate D2L after using it for a full semester and seeing how students are engaging with the technology.  

Chan, S. (2011). Checklist for evaluating tech tools, apps, software, hardware. [Web log comment].  Retrieved February 14 from, 

http://techpudding.com/2011/04/04/checklist-for-evaluating-technology-software-and-applications/ 

Responses to Classmates Week #5

Laura Smart:

As I read your post I was reminded of a topic that came up at a conference I was just at a few weeks ago regarding teacher mentors.  The statistic that 50% of teachers leave the profession in their first 5 years in astounding.  I think there needs to be an improved teacher mentoring program.  In Ontario there is the NTIP (New Teacher Induction Program) but teachers only qualify if they have received a full time contract or an LTO that is more than a certain length.  I think digital tools could definitely play a role in teacher collaboration and mentorship.  I think one of the most overwhelming things as a new teacher is accessing good teaching resources and supports for your classroom.  If each school board had a wiki for teachers to share resources that would be so helpful.  

Michelle Rivers:

I agree with almost all of your points regarding the drawbacks of textbooks.  Your post really resonated with me as a high school that I taught at a few years ago made the decision to stop purchasing textbooks in the Science department and invest in computers instead.  This school installed a class set of computers in two science labs.  Some of their arguments to stop purchasing textbooks were similar to the ones you have mentioned in your post.  In Science there are so many interactive or animated online resources that are much more engaging than anything found in a textbook.  I think more high schools and post-secondary institutions should shift to using e-textbooks that are either free or accessible at a small cost.