Notes from Presentation by Desire2Learn

March 14, 2005 (written by Laura Sederberg)

In attendance: Bill Evans, Laura Sederberg, Brian Oppy, Mike Spiess, Cris Guenter, Paul Persons, Linda Post, Glenda Morgan, Jean Irving, Jennifer Nowotny, Carlos Araya, Kathy Fernandes, Dave Abbott, Bill Post

Notes:

· D2L can migrate from WebCT via the IMS file

· D2L has a learning object repository

· Company is 6 years old in April

· Company started as enterprise-wide solution

· First company SCORM certified

· NOT partnered, invested by Microsoft

· 2 million learns world-wide

o 70% in Higher Ed

o 20% in K-12

o 10% Corporate

· Open standard:  SCORM 1.2 RTE 3

· Ohio State is partnering with them to create an e-Portfolio piece

· Listened to customers demands for flexible system

Must-Do List

1. Easy to use

2. Simple interface

3. Connectedness & community

4. Diverse learning

5. Active learning

6. Interoperate with Admin, library and other authentication

7. Import/export capabilities

8. Standards based

No price jumps between upgrades, included in contract price.

Contracts can be annually or lifetime

Only one system (enterprise)

Architecture

· Flexible with custom design and custom roles

· No limits

· Minnesota State has 54 campuses; 370,000 students; can accommodate all with different SIS systems

· Claims to other LMS can scale this large

Migration or Conversion

· Automated course conversion for WebCT or Blackboard

· Can migrate course by course or in batch

· Claim 90-95% conversion

· NO cost for conversion

· PeopleSoft (Wisconsin oldest user) and nine others

· uPortal functions with D2L

· Not sure if supports CAS

Hardware

· SQL database?

· Windows 2000/2003

· Load balancing

· Clustering application servers?

· Crash proof?

· Not sure of recovery?

· Up-time 99.9%

· All clients have moved to Windows servers (from Sun or)

Learning Object Repository (LOR)

· Shared content

· Tag info, publish to LOR

· Can find, retrieve

· Report, improve/edit

· All SCORM and IMS standards-based

· Can set permissions for outside of course access to world

· Moving towards e-packs that are standards based

Train the Trainer

· Live and virtual instructor and admin training available

· Support is 24/7 for admin and techn

· Online resources exists, too

Licenses

· Perpetual or annual based on enrollment

o One student/one course or

o FTE, unlimited courses or

o Users (not FTE), unlimited courses

Cross Platform: Mac and PC

Browsers supported (Safari problems, but will fix)

· Index for settings per user/per role defineable

· Can set up defaults in templates

· HTML editor works on a Mac, is third party product

· Instructor can impersonate a student

Features

· Discussions are NOT gradeable

· Calendar doesn’t have relative dating

· Voice over is coming

· Not sure about integration with Turnitin.com

· Student Homepage

· Locker (share content across courses, student)

· Selective release features

· LOR can be available to students

· Can create templates at will

· Try it out

Talk to San Bernardino about their pilot test.