Suzan Muhanna/Winonan
Ken Graetz, director of teaching, learning and technology services at Winona State University, says that 90 percent of faculty use Desire 2 Learn, or D2L, for one purpose or another.
Desire 2 Learn, an online management system that allows communication between professors and their students went through an upgrade from version 9 to version 10 over winter break.
Graetz said, “The changes to the site took a total of one day, which was then back up and running the following day.”
According to Graetz, Minnesota State Colleges and Universities, or MnSCU, decided on the upgrade of the popular online tool for all its affiliate institutions.
Starting Dec. 28, D2L shut down for the whole day and restarted for faculty members later that night.
For students however, the site did not work until the following day, Dec. 29.
Graetz said the program has been reliable, although it runs slowly at times, and rarely it may shut down unexpectedly.
The organization of the pages in D2L is the most visible difference that occurred during the upgrade. Most of the links are now combined in multiple drop links under six main categories: Materials, Communication, Assessments, Library, Resources and Help.
Other changes improve professors’ grading productivity through the “dropbox”. Discussions have become easier for faculty members as well.
“Anything that forms the social part of D2L is what I am excited for,” Graetz said.
Amanda Brouwer, a psychology professor at Winona State, said she uses D2L often.
“D2L is such a powerful tool with so many features and options that at time it can be a bit overwhelming to find and use certain components.” Because of this, she prefers the new version of the website. “With the new version I feel as if I can more quickly access the components of the program that I use,” she said.
Students also noticed the changes. First-year student Tyler Boe said the updates are helpful and it is more organized than the last version.
Simon Williams, a student, said, “It’s a lot easier to access.”
Although Winona State changed Desire 2 Learn because of the MnSCU system’s decision, the improvements have seemed to please faculty and students, even if it takes time to get used to the changes.
Workshops were available to prepare faculty ahead of time.
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