Item: D2L Brightspace
Rating: 8
Author: Claudia Howery

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Desire2Learn is being used across the whole organization. This software enables organizations to use it for both online courses and on-campus courses. This is a plus for anyone who wants to be sustainable. Instructors have the opportunity of eliminating the need of paper and can review and assess students coursework online. It also helps to flip the classroom by making course material readily available online so students can review this class meets. This gives instructors the advantage of making a more efficient use of classroom time. On-campus lecture meetings can be enriched by the use of more engaging activities to reinforce the topics or the activities delivered via D2L.
D2L is a key element in most of our online courses as this serves as an entry portal for the course where students will find the task lists, handouts, interactive online activities, online assessments, etc. The ability to track students performance is a key feature in D2L. This helps us to identify who we need to reach out and identify their needs or challenges in the online classroom.

Pros and Cons

Regarding the software itself, there are tools that are particularly key in our organization and these tools have been improved in every upgrade. For example the User Progress Tool is one of our favorites because offers the capability to monitor students performance within the course and helps address the student's challenges before they fail. It also helps on assessing what extra resources are being used by the students and what others are not really useful at all. Overall, I think D2L tries to keep up with improvements that can ease ease the user experience. There is still more work to do, but we've seen how this product has evolved.
Regarding new mobile capabilities, D2L has increased these like any other LMS is doing. The Grader App is currently used just by few of us, but the ability to access and review course content using the basic Mobile web is incredibly handy. Many instructors and students carry their mobile devices and embrace the ability of having instant access on the go.
Desire2Learn technical support is good and we have received a decent turn around time in their response whenever we have specific questions or request extra help. I believe their first tier level of technical support is pretty responsive. Some of the technical support people are very knowledgeable and have an immediate answer to incidents we have had in the past. I would like to see more people like this in tier one as I have learned a lot from their help support.
The extensibility of the software and capability to integrate with textbook publisher's content or other external applications is highly important and so far has been an easy setup in D2L.
The ability to send notifications to students when a grade or news is posted has been an asset for our instructors and students.

The Attendance Register is a time-consuming tool. It would be great to have the ability to create the attendance based on set of dates. For example if my course is a 10-week course it will ease my work if I can just define end and start dates, and the number of sessions the class meets. The software would generate 10 records based on the dates provided. I believe Educator used to have this option.
I would rather have visible quick options for "Delete, Reorder, and Copy" These are now collapsed in a button. Users are more familiar with having visible Delete/Copy options. Also the "Delete" is kind of odd. One must click "Delete" to display the "list of items that can be deleted" then mark what you want to delete and click another button. This is just confusing for our users.
It would be great to have the ability to restrict submission views per students and within a time frame. Right now to do this I have to restrict the visibility of the quiz per student and create a submission view to for Post-quiz review, and then a "Close post-quiz review," but this only solves part of my problem as I cannot give access to submission views based on time and per student. Let's say that I have two students who want to review the quiz at different times on the same day. I have create a submission view for that student and give her access to the quiz. Once the student's "review period has expired" I have to go back into the quiz disable her special access and enable the access for the second student who will review the quiz in the afternoon.

Return on Investment

From users comments, this software has reduced their paper load, allows them to be more mobile, and reduces grading time. The positive impact I've seen from my position level in this organization is that students can access course content wherever they are (this is a plus that any LMS software has). Our organization has outstanding instructors, and D2L tools are an added value that helps them teach more effectively.
Instructors feel comfortable and at ease that their students can access vital course material and perform some online activities thanks to this software. When there is a question on how to use the software, our instructors know they can count on our organization's helpdesk support to find a solution or an workaround for their needs.

Alternatives Considered

Canvas,Blackboard,Moodle

I did not participate in the LMS selection. This review is based on my experience using different LMS' and from users' feedback regarding their experience when using this software. In my opinion the software is easy to use and I feel more comfortable building a course using D2L as oppose to using Canvas or Blackboard. Both Canvas and Blackboard are good LMS options, but each organization must evaluate how any of those fits their needs. Blackboard is a robust LMS with may good features, but depending on your user population more features mean more confusion, and perhaps users may not use all the goodies that this software offers. I think D2L's basic tools in the Learning Environment are just what our users need. Also, for those interested on using or developing interactive content, I've been able to import Articulate Studio SCORM lessons to D2L courses without any issues. This is something I have not been able to achieve when using Canvas.If you need more interactive content and are an Articulate user, Canvas does not seem to be ready for this. You would need to find a work around to make your lessons available. Because each organization is unique, I think that whatever LMS your organization chooses you must have helpdesk support that will work with your instructors on how to implement what they want to do with the software.

Likelihood to Renew

My position is that of offering support using the software and develop courses. "Renewing decisions are not under the scope of my job responsibilities." My highest contribution whenever an LMS is being purchased is that of testing and find the best way to implement this. Regardless of the LMS I must find its strengths and prepare the workarounds that will help our customers to do what they need with the software.

Likelihood to Recommend

D2L is well suited for Higher Education as any other LMS would do. I have not had the opportunity to see how it would work to deliver organization's training. There might be tools that are not needed for this. When selecting an LMS, based on our target population, I would ask about its mobile capabilities, its ability to interface with student information systems, tracking of students progress, and course content usage. I would also look for its interoperability with other tool providers that can help enrich the learning experience of our students. The user interface needs to be friendly and intuitive. "Less clicks is better." D2L software can be a bit challenging for users who are not familiar with computer usage. For this group of users, using some of the D2L tools might not be intuitive.

My Positive Experience Using D2L

Software Version

Modules Used

Overall Satisfaction