Would you like to make a decision using the EduTools Summative Decision Tool?
| Product Name | Desire2Learn Learning Environment 8.4.2 |
|---|---|
| Developer Name | Desire2Learn Inc. |
| URL | http://www.desire2learn.com/learningenvironment/ |
| Review Date | March 08, 2010 |
| Forums | Desire2Learn Learning Environment 8.4.2 Discussions |
| Reviewer | Email Review Staff |
| Communication Tools | |
| Discussion Forum |
Discussions can be viewed by date, by thread, by title or by author. Users may create separate discussion environments for small groups. Discussion threads are expandable and collapsible to view an entire conversation on one screen. Posts can include media, equations, attachments or URL addresses. Posts can be either plain text or html. Administrators can enable or disable anonymous postings. The entire discussion can be saved or printed for off-line reading. Discussions can be shared across courses, departments, or any organizational unit. Users can associate a discussion with any course content. Users can limit discussions to specific time periods and for specific groups. Discussion topics can be tied to learning activities. Discussion messages are then assessed using scoring rubrics, and that assessment is used to evaluate learning objectives and competencies. User contributions in discussions can be evaluated and tied to grade items. Numerous options determine how the grade is calculated. Courses can enable peer review of discussion posts. Roles with appropriate permission can provide a 1-5 rating for discussion posts. Discuss |
| Discussion Management |
Multiple group topics/forums can be automatically created based upon rules (e.g. manual enrollment, self-enrollment, auto-enrollment into groups of x, or auto-enrollment into x groups). Discuss |
| File Exchange |
Drop box assignment folders can be linked to grade items and instructors can associate feedback with uploaded assignments. The system could be setup to apply a naming convention to files (e.g. userid - date submited - name - file name). All users can use a private locker into which they can upload and download files. Students can upload files to a shared group folder. Administrators can set folder permissions and quota tracking on their folders. Virus detection technology can be used throughout the file upload/download process. Group dropboxes can be setup so that each member of a group can submit to the same dropbox. The group can then be assessed as a whole through the Grades or Competencies tools. When a user submits a file to the dropbox they can choose to submit the file from their locker computer or their locker (or group locker). Graders have a function that allows them to preview how a student would submit to the dropbox and even grade that submission to ensure it was setup properly. You can select multiple assignments and edit their properties at once. Educators can also use Manage Files to upload/download/zip/cut/copy/paste/delete files for the course. Educators can also manage these files with folders and if they have access, they can publish them to Learning Repository. WebDAV option is available for them to drag-and-drop files. Files can be copied between courses and re-used. Through a deep integration with Turnitin, plagiarism detection and online submission markup is seamlessly integrated into the user experience if the organization has a Turnitin license. Multiple configurations exist for dropbox due dates and extensions, ability to submit multiple files, etc. Discuss |
| Internal Email |
The Desire2Learn email system can be setup to support multiple modes: full email system, internal course-mail only, forwarded to an external account, IMAP, and other combinations. The email system also supports tracking/filtering correspondence by course, folders, personal address-books, search, and more. Emails can be composed using HTML editor, spell checked, saved as drafts, and can add multiple attachments. Flexible email permissions allow for different email options for each role. For instance, for certain roles, administrator can restrict receiving messages from email address that are not internal. Also, storage quotas can be defined individually for each role in the system. Discuss |
| Online Journal/Notes |
Users can make notes in a personal journal and may share them with their instructor. Students can make notes in a personal work area in preformatted text or HTML-style with tags and can perform spell checking. Users can choose to Blog in an environment that is either open to the public or restricted to users in their Learning Environment (determined by administrators). They can also choose to make entries private, supporting the concept of a Blog journal. A user has the ability to decide which entries they wish to receive comments and how long an entry appears on their list. Furthermore, RSS feed is supported in Blog feature such that users do not necessary need to login to Desire2Learn to see new headlines and articles. These features provide a safe and secure environment for a Blogger to communicate and add links, images, media files and to receive feedback. Discuss |
| Real-time Chat |
Desire2Learn offers a AJAX-based HTML chat which doesn't require any plug-ins and has settings to optimize for screenreaders too (for accessibility). In addition, Desire2Learn offers a full synchronous chat whiteboard/canvas, presentation technology called LiveRoom(TM). There is also a built-in instant messaging tool, also known as Pager -- this tool can be used to send quick instant messages to others in contacts list. It is disabled during quizzes. In addition, Desire2Learn integrates seamlessly to Elluminate with the Online Rooms tool, allowing users to create, manage, and launch synchronous Elluminate sessions from Learning Environment if the organization has an Elluminate license. Discuss |
| Whiteboard |
Rooms can be created easily and moderator has the ability to manage participants and the session. Participants can be "promoted" or "demoted", ask questions, raise hands, send private chat messages and more. Presentation management tools allow annotations, drawing canvas or whiteboard, resource sharing, quick link to course content, highly-scalable chat program, as well as a fully integrated web browser. LiveRoom Express option is also available for organizations that only need canvas whiteboard for their presentation needs. Content uploaded to LiveRoom can be re-used within the Learning Environment, and content used in the Learning Environment is available directly from LiveRoom. Finally, there is a built-in instant messaging tool, also known as Pager. This tool can be used to send quick instant messages to others in contacts list. It is disabled during quizzes. Integration with Elluminate provides an additional option for synchronous communication if the organization has an Elluminate license. Discuss |
| Productivity Tools | |
| Bookmarks |
Users can create annotated bookmarks, one at a time, for specific courses. Students can bookmark content pages, creating a link that allows them to quickly return to any particular section in the course content. There is also a jump to last topic bookmark. Discuss |
| Calendar/Progress Review |
The system also supports shared calendars, and the ability to look up other individuals availability for group meetings. There is also advanced import/export based upon the iCal standard to support integration with Microsoft Outlook or other calendar systems. There is also the ability post events across departments, the organization, or any other organizational unit. Events can be prioritized (e.g. normal, high, low). The system also supports auto-population of calendar from key tools such as quizzing, dropbox, etc. Discuss |
| Searching Within Course |
Desire2Learn Learning Repository allows course content/files to be stored/searched/accessed within the course by users in the system by utilizing standard based metadata. For more information on Learning Repository, please refer to section on Content Sharing/Reuse below. Discuss |
| Work Offline/Synchronize |
Instructors can publish course content on a CD-ROM that can be dynamically linked from within the online course or viewed offline. Students can compile and download the content for an entire course into a format that can be printed or stored locally. Discuss |
| Orientation/Help |
The system includes online guides and inline help. Users can access context sensitive help for each of the major tools. Help items are further customizable by the institution. Users can use keywords to search a guide and other help documentation made available by the organization. Institutions can also create FAQs and help files, as well as custom widgets to organize access to orientation information. Discuss |
| Student Involvement Tools | |
| Groupwork |
Each group can have its own shared group presentation folder, discussion forum, chat room, group email list, assignments, activities, assessments, shared calendar events, file exchange, assigned group leadership. A user can assign grades to entire groups. When creating group categories you can provide the members of those groups with their own areas in the discussions, dropbox and locker tools. Users now have a ‘group homepage’ where they can see all of the groups they belong to, and what group workspaces are available. Options exist to automatically enroll new users in a course into groups based on pre-defined logic (i.e. X number of people per group, or a maximum of X groups). Discuss |
| Community Networking |
Users from different courses can interact in system-wide chat rooms or discussion forums. Users can create online clubs, interest, and study groups. Users can send email to their groups, use a shared chat space, calendar and announcements, and share material privately within the group. Additionally, Desire2Learn platform can be used as a collaboration environment for executive committees and corporate working groups. For instance, Desire2Learn Community is powered by Desire2Learn Learning Environment and has been specifically configured to work more as a community space than a traditional course delivery environment. Discuss |
| Student Portfolios |
Desire2Learn also offers a full ePortfolio product (see http://www.desire2learn.com/eportfolio/). Discuss |
| Administration Tools | |
| Authentication |
The system has a password reminder option and students can maintain their own passwords. Administrators can set password length restrictions and require password changes after the initial logon and after a specified period of time. Single Sign On option is also supported. User logins can be encrypted with the Secure Sockets Layer protocol. Discuss |
| Course Authorization |
Discuss |
| Registration Integration |
Discuss |
| Hosted Services |
The product provider offers a hosted system that includes 24x7x365 monitoring, redundant hosting platforms, intrusion detection, nightly backups, options for geographical disaster recovery, and service level agreements on a network of high-performance, fault-tolerant servers with fail-over capability with redundant Tier 1 network connections. Discuss |
| Course Delivery Tools | |
| Test Types |
Discuss |
| Automated Testing Management |
Discuss |
| Automated Testing Support |
There is a consolidated question library for quizzes, surveys and self assessments. Test questions can incorporate images, sound, video and other media types. Questions can be built with the tool or instructors can import and export questions from external test banks in the IMS QTI specification format or custom CSV format. Questions can be randomized to provide different questions for different users/attempts. Random values can be generated for variables to provide different questions to different students. Users can also use HTML editor and Spell Check feature to respond to questions. You can set a time limit on a test and give special access for individual students. Assessments can be restricted by IP address or a password. Assessments can be shared across several organizational units, and data can be aggregated during report generation. Quizzing allows you to customize reports on user and question data that can be exported. Users can override the automated scoring and determine how to communicate test results to students. At the users discretion, questions can be edited on multiple quizzes at the same time and in the question library. Students can also be locked out of the instant messaging tool and have their copy/paste and print tools restricted while taking a quiz. Respondus Lockdown Browser is also supported. Discuss |
| Online Marking Tools |
Discuss |
| Online Gradebook |
Users can grade assignments, essay type quizzes/exams online and provide feedback. Grades from quizzes and assignments can be updated in Gradebook tool automatically. There is the ability to manually edit all grades using just the keyboard. Gradebook tool is useful for basic statistical analysis and final grade calculation. The software automatically calculates the minimum, maximum, and average grade on any grade items including assignments and quizzes. Grade items can be grouped according to grade categories created by instructors. For instance, grade items Quiz #1 and #2 are part of Quiz category/section. Instructors can create a course grading scale that can employ either percentages, letter grades or pass/fail metrics and even create custom grade schemes. Furthermore, grade items can use built in formula editor to create functions which includes If statement, Max/Min, Sum, Avg, etc. to aggregate multiple grade items together allowing instructors to create complex grades scenarios for their course. The Gradebook supports import/export comma-delimited (csv) files. All Gradebook activities are tracked and stored in event logs. Learning Environment also supports the creation of scoring rubrics that can be used as a scoring guide for subjective and quantitative assessments. Rubrics can be created and copied for use within a course, or shared across the organization. Rubrics can have any number of evaluation levels and have numerical components to allow for automatic evaluation, or evaluated manually using existing assessment tools. Many grade items and categories can be selected and edited at once. Grade items can be tied to learning objectives. Learning activities are evaluated based on numeric values for those items and compared to achievement threseholds defined by the instructor; or can be evaluated manually using a scoring rubric. There is a setup wizard that walks a new user through the process of setting up their gradebook. When importing grades, new grade items can now be created. A new view of grades has been created that shows all items in an editable format. The user can easily tab through the data fields to enter grade values for any user. Users can choose to email any selected user from the grades tool. Discuss |
| Course Management |
Supported versions of IMS CP packages can be imported and also exported from any course in the Learning Environment. Users (that have permission to do so) have the ability to choose individual items to copy/import/export. For instance, instructors can choose a single quiz and specific topic to export rather than exporting all quizzes and content. Also, courses can be reoffered by using Copy Course Component feature. Competencies can be assessed automatically using quizes, surveys, dropbox assignments and manually using an online rubric builder. There is a single interface that controls which tools an organization will use. Each course can then choose which of those tools they actually want to use (i.e. the Organization may enable the ‘LiveRoom’ tool, but a given course may turn that off it they don’t want to use it). Discuss |
| Student Tracking |
Administration can share this tracking information with the user, if desired. A data warehouse, stores the information the Learning Environment logs such that large reports can run during normal business operations. All data in the data warehouse is documented in the Data Dictionary such that 3rd party reporting tool can be used to access the data. Flexible data set definitions allow for many reports to be generated. Reporting supports many filters as well as render types including Tabular, Area, Line, Bar and Pie graphs. Additional reports on usage and activity are provided by Desire2Learn Analytics (see http://www.desire2learn.com/analytics/) Discuss |
| Content Development Tools | |
| Accessibility Compliance |
Desire2Learn actively tests with the JAWS, and other screen readers and assistive technologies. The company works with clients, the accessibility community and the W3C to validate and identify accessibility features. Users can also change font sizes and styles to meet their accessibility needs. The Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT) is an industry standard template for recording how a product or service conforms to Section 508 standards. This VPAT outlines the compliance of Learning Environment 8.4. Discuss |
| Content Sharing/Reuse |
Desire2Learn Learning Repository tightly integrates with Desire2Learn Learning Environment to provide a central content/learning object repository where learning objects can be stored and reused by users in the system. By utilizing user roles and management tool in Learning Environment, different permission settings can be applied to multiple repositories. Learning Objects (i.e. assets, topics, modules, and course) can be published to the Learning Repository using industry metadata standards including IEEE LOM, Dublin Core, GEM and CanCore. Searching within the Repository can be done through Basic Search, Advance Search and Local Browsing of custom taxon schemas. Local browing is an alternative to searching for key words and titles (or any other fields defined in metadata), users can also search by browsing through classification and taxonomy. Moreover, both harvesting and federated searching is supported which allows users to search in external repository search as MERLOT. When desired learning objects are found, it can be dynamically or statically linked to the repository, retrieved or exported in IMS format. Discuss |
| Course Templates |
Course templates containing either layout or content can be created at any level above the specific section level. Instructors can create announcements, calendar entries, discussions, links, syllabus, course descriptions and other course content using templates that include a HTML editor (a.k.a. WYSIWYG content editor), or upload and choose content from the system-wide content library. Instructors can create new content templates. Instructors can incorporate course functions into specific course templates. Discuss |
| Customized Look and Feel |
The system can support multiple institutions, departments, schools or other organizational divisions on an individual server setup. Each unit can be separately branded. Distinct designs can also be applied at both the course and specific section level. The user can customize the appearance of a course by changing the order and name of menu items and the location and width of the navigation bar. Custom tools can be created and quickly added and removed from course or student home pages. Students can customize the sounds, colors, font sizes, and layout of the tools within the interface. Administrators can change the availability, order and name of menu items. Depending on user’s role and permission, the user has access to certain tools/features in the learning environment. Users can choose any page as the first page that is viewed when the content tool is accessed.The instructor can view any feedback that was left for content topics and review both detailed and summary information. Multiple modules or topics could be selected and their properties could be edited at once. Users can choose any page as the first page of the content area. Discuss |
| Instructional Design Tools |
Desire2Learn also has Desire2Learn QuickLinks which allows a user to quickly link to resources (e.g. a quiz, assignment, form, survey, etc.) from all tools and to turn them into topics within the course. Instructors can create sequences using conditional release based on a user’s past performance and accomplishment. Desire2Learn offers course design services to assist organizations in creating their course material. Discuss |
| Instructional Standards Compliance |
The competencies tool support IMS RDCEO. Desire2Learn also support more recent versions of IMS Enterprise. For metadata, Desire2Learn supports IEEE LOM, Dublin Core, GEM and CanCore. The system includes a tool to import courses from other learning platforms into Desire2Learn. Learning Environment also supports IMS Common Cartridge 1.0 for import packages, and IMS Basic Learning Tools Interoperability for integration with external systems. Discuss |
| Hardware/Software | |
| Client Browser Required |
Reviewer Comments Firefox 3.5 (Windows and Mac OS X) Firefox 3.0 (Windows and Mac OS X) Firefox 2 (Windows and Mac OS X) Internet Explorer 8 (Windows) Internet Explorer 7 (Windows) Internet Explorer 6 (Windows) Chrome (Investigation) Safari 4.0 (Investigation) Safari 3.1 (Mac OS X) Discuss |
| Database Requirements |
Discuss |
| UNIX Server |
Discuss |
| Windows Server |
Discuss |
| Company Details/Licensing | |
| Company Profile |
Reviewer Comments Located in the US, Canada (3 offices with headquarters in Kitchener-Waterloo), Australia, and the UK. Desire2Learn was founded in 1999. It employs over 185 people and is privately held. Discuss |
| Costs / Licensing |
Reviewer Comments There is an initial startup fee. The license fees are typically based on either an FTE or per user/enrollment depending on the client requirements. Discuss |
| Open Source |
Discuss |
| Optional Extras |
Reviewer Comments There are numerous other features and functionality provided by Desire2Learn, including (but not limited to) a full survey tool, advanced data warehouse, competency and learning objectives, mobile offerings, integrations with 3rd party tools, advanced blogging, conversion tools to streamline migrations from other systems, ePortfolio, web services, robust learning object repository, and advanced in-line HTML editor. For more information, to contact Desire2Learn, or for online virtual demonstrations, visit http://www.desire2learn.com/ For clients looking for a full-featured and flexible learning management system and suite of related offerings, Learning Environment provides powerful and flexible course management, communication/collaboration, measurement/assessment, and administration tools to support your e-Learning vision, with a focus on usability, performance, accessibility, and scalability. Learning Environment is pedagogy-independent and can be incorporated into any program or course, in any vertical (higher education, K-12, corporate, healthcare, etc.), for any delivery method (fully online, in-class, hybrid). Discuss |