Thoughts on Desire2learn demo

I just watched a demo on Desire2learn. First comment I must highlight is that only one person comes for the presentation. Espilen also have one person. Blackboard sends an army of sales rep plus someone on a conf call.

D2L has a very interesting feature called the instructional design wizard that walks the user through: creating competencies, assessments, learnig objectives. Remember the blooms taxonomy? The smart move D2L came up with was to create assessment types according to blooms taxonomy/learning objectives. So let’s say you’re looking to assess analytical skills or just plain retention. For each learning objective it will give you the different activities that you can use. Whether it’s through journal, eportolio, just quizzes. This tool is a great move towards instructional quality.

Looks: although d2l is fully flexible in terms of its design the intuitiveness, usability, navegBility impresses much non tech savvy users. Usability-wise I believe d2l is leading the race followed by epsilen.

Mastercopies: I asked the sales rep if we could create mastercopies and just copy them over throughout consecutive semesters. We can do that but also we don’t have to get all that work done since they have a content repository and just link mastercopies to a new course. This would save course developer so much time.

Multimedia: different to other lms, instructors can easily copy and pastecontent from any website to course content – which in webct would case the course shell to have problems. Embed YouTube videos or any other video link. This is different because many other lms would not understand most of video formats and

Internal links: remember when you wanted to link discussions and assignments in your content And you would have to go on tricky ways to figure out each link to put into content screen? Well it looks like in here the internal links problem is solved.

GrAde book: this grade books solves many issues encountered in most lms. There’s a great amount of flexiblitiy. For each grade we can leave comments with links to other areas in the course such as lessons, rubric and so on.

Rubric: there’s a possibility to attach rubric to each activity when grading.

In sum, I think Desire2Learn solves many technical issues and provides a greater flexibility – not to mention the improved usability in comparison to other systems.

Blackboard on ipad/iphone

I had the opportunity to look at the blackboard app and I could not possibly resist writing a post on my thoughts about it.

The first hit is, surely, the looks.

Interface: as a designer, I want to say the look and feel causes a good impression initially. The design concept reminds you of a blackboard with a sleek font, chalk texture, sicky notes on a cork board. In terms of menu navigation theres no question that a iLiterate person will find it quite usable – although the interface is only meeting apple standards.

Crashes: everytime I attempted posting a new discussion thread or replying to one and submitting to a new assignment the app crashed. And when I tried replying to a discussion through safari on my iPhone I realized the browser doesn’t read the text editor. iPhone or ipad users will not be able to post on discussion forums because the text editor is incompatible with blackboard.

Content screens: When accessing course content text will appear without least text formatting in a pop up window – lines will not have breaking space in between and wordswillappearslikeonecontinuouslongword. You can have this popup window to display this same content as browser-like which is basically blackboards web version (inside this tiny window). You can maximize it to full screen and you’ll see the real version of that content with all the propper text formatting HOWEVER… In this expanded browser content the balckboard menu isn’t functional. So if you’re looking at your course content through expanded browser version you won’t be able to go to any other area through the menu.

Instead you can close this window which will lead you back to the app from where you can try accessing that menu again.

Tools visualization: when you open discussion board you will actually see an interface that looks a lot like the texting screen on the iPhone – with baloons vertically organized to indicate a dialogue such as in comic books – although you cant post once the app crashes. BUT a lot of the tools in blackboard app don’t open inside the app like discussion. The only ones that open in the app without the need to open the browser are: blog, discussion, announcement, textual content without readibility.