D2L

Description
Desire2Learn (D2L) is a Web-based course management system offering teaching and learning tools for course development, delivery and management. D2L provides the flexibility to control the environment to match your own unique approach to teaching and learning. It provides tools to help facilitate communication, collaboration and community building among students and faculty.

Key Advantages
For instructors:

• Allows you to create course sites that include state-of-the-art instructional resources
• Allows you to develop an online learning environment that encourages student interaction and collaboration
• Allows you to efficiently manage and coordinate administrative tasks, freeing up classroom time for more teaching and learning activities

For students:

• Allows access to course materials anytime, anywhere
• Allows collaboration with other students
• Allows students to engage in course-related activities in a single environment
• Teaches students new technology skills

Key Features

• Content area where you can easily organize learning activities, reading materials, assignment instructions and other instructional resources for access by students
• Discussion board where you and students can discuss course-related material and respond to reflective questions posed by you
• Electronic gradebook that calculates grades in a points or weighted system and where posted grades can be accessed by students anytime, anywhere
• Quizzing tool where you select a variety of quiz formats and control access by dates, times, number of attempts and presentation of questions

Innovative Uses
Innovations for some course related functions:

• A history instructor uses the chat feature in D2L to conduct a role playing exercise in which students assume the role of an assigned historical character and participate in an online chat
• A course director utilizes D2L for a large course in which multiple sections of the same course are taught by different teaching assistants. The director creates a master course and then copies the components of the master course to each of the section sites, ensuring standardization of curriculum across all sections of the course
• A graduate course instructor utilizes D2L to house a variety of digital video and audio files which students access with the Content tool and then discuss with the Discussion tool
• A course director in science utilizes the auto-grading feature of the Quiz tool to deliver homework to students in a very large course, eliminating the need for printing paper copies or manual grading of the completed assignments

Innovations for some non course related functions:

• Using the Quiz tool, one campus department uses a D2L course site to conduct placement tests for assignment of students into the appropriate level course in the program
• A UA department uses a D2L course site as an advising center in which advisors can communicate with students, post forms and resources for students to access, and keep confidential records of advising activities and appointments
• Several UA departments use D2L course sites to offer continuing professional education courses to professionals in the general public

Getting Started
Decide early on what your uses will be. There are a lot of tools available to D2L users but most must be planned for. So, first get familiar with D2L capabilities. Know what you want before requesting a course as each layer you add to your D2L course requires planning and implementation. Select how little or how much you want to use and how you will use it. Will it be a stand-alone course, used to supplement classroom learning or a blended course? What materials (content) will you put online? E-reserves? PDFs? How involved will the materials be: audio or video? Will you use the Grade book, quizzing, drop boxes, discussions, live chat, glossary, FAQs or check lists?

To request a D2L course, complete the Course Request Form.