Desire 2 Learn (D2L) - A Learning Curve

The last few weeks, I have spent hours redesigning the four courses I am teaching this semester for use with D2L.  The University System of Georgia switched from the legacy Blackboard WebCT Vista as of January.  The timing is challenging for all faculty, not just me.  The students are a part of the learning curve, too.  I had a student phone me last evening, because he could not submit a quiz.  Fortunately, the IT help desk was able to help him.  He left a text message that all was working after he did some additional software updates.. 

I have been using learning management systems for 16 years.  It is not that D2L is not a good platform, it is more about figuring out which buttons to click to make lessons appear (yes, quicklink is my favorite) and how to get quizzes & discussions appear in the electronic grade book.  I am empathetic for other teachers new to learning management systems with the tight timeline that we have had.  The students have been terrific as they struggle to figure out how to navigate the courses. 

Desire 2 Learn Course Management System - Lessons Learned

The University System of Georgia will be using Desire 2 Learn (D2L) beginning spring 2013.  We have been using the Blackboard WebCT/Vista system.  What that means is very little school break because all of our courses have to be imported & finalized OR created with D2L prior to January 7.  We are fortunate is the USG system to have some very talented IT folks who paved the way to make the transition as painless as possible.  One of two courses imported correctly and required only minor editing. The third and fourth courses had to be created from scratch. However, the transition is still challenging because of the time crunch!

Things learned today:

1. Creating a quiz using the Diploma Quiz maker that comes with the textbook works!  I zipped the quiz for D2L and used the import feature in D2L.  D2L recognized it as a quiz and filed it correctly. The quiz imported as "inactive" - so I had to make it active and customize the display settings.
2. Respondus works!  I am able to upload and download quizzes and surveys from D2L.
3. StudyMate Author will NOT import into D2L.  I had to save the interactive learning as a Flash object (3 files) and then import them into the D2L file manager.The "look" is the same - as a matter of fact, it is a nice way to edit the look. 
4. SoftChalk files work
5. The New Topic > QuickLink is the magic tool in D2L!

The "good" news is that there is so much repetition involved with building a course that allows for practicing learning.