Learning Insights

By John Baker | Published: Thursday, April 05, 2012

Straight From the Source

It’s come to our attention from various individuals that rumors and false statements are being circulated about the independence of Desire2Learn.  

Contrary to certain statements you may have read or heard, Blackboard (or any other company) has no control over, interest in, or any say whatsoever in Desire2Learn Incorporated, its subsidiaries, or Desire2Learn technology.  Anyone suggesting anything to the contrary is simply either sadly uninformed or intentionally deceitful. 

Since being founded in 1999, we at Desire2Learn have been committed to our vision of working with clients to transform the learning experience.  We are in this for the long term.  Our 13 years successfully supporting clients has resulted in continued growth with more than eight million learners around the globe now using Desire2Learn products and services. 

We focus on the following:  listening to our clients, research and development, the continued delivery of innovative products, providing strong customer service and most importantly delivering the market leading client experience.  Our >98% client retention is a testament to this.  

I feel like we are just getting started on our journey of helping to transform the way the world learns.  That’s why we are the best choice for those organizations seeking a learning partner who is truly independent.   

I welcome any feedback and comments.  

John Baker
President & CEO
Desire2Learn Incorporated

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By Jeremy Auger | Published: Wednesday, March 28, 2012

A View on Recent Industry Activity

Hey everyone,

Ok so I'm a day late... Lots going on at Desire2Learn, and seemingly at some of our competitors! I've gotten many inquiries as to my thoughts on Blackboard's acquisition of Moodlerooms and NetSpot, so I figured I'd join the fray by posting here. I've had some time to think about what this means for us, and what it means for them... and while I've come to a few conclusions, mostly what happens (here comes the cliché) still remains to be seen.

At the end of the day, its business as usual for us at Desire2Learn. We've seen this before – a few times, actually.  Prometheus, WebCT, and Angel all come to mind. And while making these acquisitions certainly helps with their apparent focus on market share and incremental revenue, I think the real focus needs to remain on the advancement of teaching and learning, and improving the experience for our clients. This remains our focus as does our commitment to being a long-term trusted partner to our clients.

Predictions are tough and distracting. We all know that the integration of different people and platforms is difficult for any company who acquires a new technology built as a completely separate entity. The reality is that there remains a customer base out there right now wondering: "what's next?". We know that a lot more comes with a vendor relationship than just the pure technology. The corporate culture, the support, and the vision are all things our clients think about - as they should. It's not just an investment in technology, it's a partnership. I can't help feel a bit uncomfortable with the state of the LMS industry overall. There's lots of talk out there about the LMS being "commoditized", or in some extreme views "dead". I don't believe this at all. And I don't believe Desire2Learn should make any change in our direction.

First, we've mostly abandoned the use of the term LMS. We believe the traditional LMS functionality of yesteryear has become table stakes. Putting some courseware online and doing a quiz is no longer enough. A true learning environment, built for the purpose of advancing teaching and learning, dealing with serious issues of scale and student outcomes, supporting multiple modes of learning, addressing accessibility concerns, and generally tapping into the plethora of people and information out there in a meaningful way, is still a hugely important task. Advancements such as these won't just happen on their own. Investments in R&D have to be made, and new methods for improving learning have to be discovered. This doesn't happen through the consolidation of industry. For many of these acquired vendors, market competition, the drive to differentiate, and knowing there were alternatives if their clients weren't happy, is likely what drove their investment in R&D. While all this integration and disruption happens, focus is removed from making advancements. And with less choice for customers, there's less pressure for differentiation which is usually at the heart of innovation. So, while I don't think yesterday's news is by any means the death of the LMS, it does remind me just how important the focus on innovation and customers is; especially in something as important as our education system.

As always, we're interested in understanding your thoughts on this so please send along any of your comments and questions.

Jeremy Auger
CTO & Executive VP
Desire2Learn Incorporated

Posted in: Corporate eLearning Industry Trends Learning Management System Research and Design Transforming Teaching & Learning

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By Shawn McEwen | Published: Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Mobile Development Challenge Starts at the Grassroots

During the past few months, I’ve had a great opportunity to engage with students and faculty at our local Conestoga College. In one of my several visits, I discovered their inaugural ‘4x4 Challenge’ – an internal technology development contest that really peeked my interest. I was intrigued; why would students dedicate Reading Week (their week off from school!) to work on a project that may never see the light of day? Not to mention, with limited resources and time (4 days x 4 nights), could they even pull it off?

After speaking with Ignac Kolenko, Chair of the School of Engineering and IT at Conestoga College, the answer was a resounding ‘yes’.  Innovation and ideas are thriving at a grassroots level. Students are self-motivated, driven, and have a great deal of pride to deliver something meaningful – something that matters.

With the Desire2Learn Edge Challenge, we hope to expand upon great events and opportunities such as these. We want to motivate students and young start-ups to innovate and create mobile solutions that transform the very educational landscape they’re a part of. ‘Mobile’ (as broad as that is) is a hugely growing space right now, and the opportunities for Higher Education solutions are endless when you consider the possibilities:

Social: Where to meet friends and check out school events

Security: One button push for friends to identify your location

Location Based:  Where to find a local club and after school sports

Transit: Never miss the bus again with up to the minute information

Integration with School Systems: Reserve a book and purchase event tickets

The use cases above look great on paper and appear easy to deploy, manage and integrate. How do you support both the diverse student community (give me all the functionality) with the somewhat technical administration, make it easy and create an out of box experience? This is an example of our vision from when we started the company. For mobile, we created a mobile SDK framework “Campus Life™” for developing rich, intuitive mobile applications that provide new ways to learn and take an active role in shaping the future. With the Campus Life framework, students are encouraged to build their own mobile applications that are specific to the culture and fabric of the institution. This creates loyalty, builds community and instills innovation at the grassroots level and cultivates the spirit of building something that matters. Stay tuned for exciting developments on this topic in future posts.

But Higher Education isn’t the only space benefiting from this growth. In K-12 schools, interactive mobile between student, teacher, and parent can build more  transparency into classroom progress and motivate learning accessible remotely from home or rural areas.

As the parent of an ambitious six-year-old, I’ve personally noticed improved engagement in our bedtime reading when using our iPad® device. She can let the story read by itself or practice words without the narrative, and the interactive nature of the illustrations is great for developing her creativity. Mobile Learning (‘mLearning’) is opening up a world of possibilities for thriving young minds.

Or, do you have an innovative idea that you’re bursting to share? Join us for Elevator Pitch Night!

With over $75,000 in cash, including a$25,000 grand prize and a trip to present your idea to education leaders at our FUSION Users’ Conference in San Diego, are you up to the challenge?

Posted in: eLearning Learning Management System Mobile Research and Design Transforming Teaching & Learning

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By Greg Boyd | Published: Thursday, February 09, 2012

Desire2Learn in the Corporate Vertical - Why, and Why Now?

2011 ended with a lot to be proud of for the Corporate team at Desire2Learn, with new clients coming on board in the final weeks of the year, and promise of more to come in early 2012. There is a great deal of momentum coming into the year because of both this growth, and also because of the investment Desire2Learn is making here in the years ahead. This is great news for our existing base of Corporate and Association clients, but does lend itself to the question of ‘why’ (let alone, ‘how’) and ‘why now’? Online Learning in the Corporate space is hardly a new idea, and there are a number of leaders in today’s marketplace already – so what makes Desire2Learn different? Among the many factors Corporate clients will consider when looking to choose an Online Learning system, we think there are three things that are absolutely critical, and that set Desire2Learn apart: Desire2Learn’s Leadership in Teaching and Learning, the Design and Flexibility of Desire2Learn products, and the Engagement Model Desire2Learn uses to work with our Corporate clients.

Leaders in Teaching and Learning Technology: Desire2Learn has built a reputation as a world leader in Online Learning in the education space, partnering with some of the finest and best known K-12 Schools, Colleges and Universities in North America and around the world. To date, the focus for the design and development of the product has been around pedagogically sound methods, which enables our users to leverage professional design that helps enhance and optimize the educational impact of the courses ‘students’ attend. Learning Departments within organizations find the Learning Environment easy to use and intuitive for structuring course design and delivery, such that users have an experience that simulates that of a traditional ‘course’ experienced at a high school or post-secondary institution. Having an environment that is intuitive for both students and instructors is critical to overcoming user’s apprehension towards Online Learning as opposed to more traditional ‘in class’ style.

System Design and Flexibility: Online Learning systems can be built on a modular ‘Organization Structure’. This enables administrators to allocate roles to various levels of users that can have unique permissions associated at the most granular level. A major barrier to the adoption of wide-spread Online Learning tends to be security and permissions concerns that obstruct an instructor or administrator’s ability to control ‘who sees what’ within the system. To ensure an effective user experience for both administrators and students, an Online Learning system must be flexible enough for users to have access that is designed for their needs, and overcome these security and privacy concerns. That is, students should be permitted only to see/access courses which they are required to take, instructors the courses they are teaching, and administrators the areas that they have authority over. This can be achieved to the extent that, in certain cases, Desire2Learn® Learning Environment can be used to grant singular access and permissions to individual users with a unique use case. Although best practice would encourage as broad an ‘Organization Structure’ as possible, some Corporate clients require levels of granularity that forces them to leverage the ‘modular’ design inherent within Desire2Learn Learning Environment.

Model for Engagement: Online Learning systems are among the many applications that organizations in the Corporate space will run internally to support day-to-day operations of their business or association. Moreover, the Online Learning system faces the challenge in some client organizations as being perceived as a ‘secondary’ priority, or perhaps even a system that can be stood up, and left alone to be accessed by students at their convenience. These are risks unique to the Corporate space, as in contrast, the Online Learning system is an essential piece of the Education Institution’s infrastructure – That is, the Online Learning system is the ‘ERP’ (Enterprise Resource Planning system) of the education space. To overcome what can be daunting challenges requires the owner of the learning program to have a defined, justified (and, often, approved) need, a strong strategy and roadmap, and sound metrics in place for measuring the success of the system. These metrics can be elusive to define, as tracking returns on training and education is far less tangible than, say, tracking ROI in dollars and cents. Desire2Learn has an effective sales design and engagement model in place for our Corporate clients to combat these challenges. The Corporate Engagement Model is made effective through the smooth transition of the client from the initial sales cycle to Account Management (AM) upon signing, where the AM team is held accountable for client’s success. Support at this stage to not only define a successful strategy for Online Learning, but to redefine and invigorate the Online Learning strategy, is critical, and is a key differentiator for how Desire2Learn engages with our Corporate clients. Backed up by a whole Support and Services organization, the entire Sales team works in partnership with clients to ensure success and the continued evolution of Online Learning within today’s organizations.

2012 is a big year for Desire2Learn, as growth is expected to continue in the Education sector, a major, new release of the product is scheduled for the Spring, and this continued push into the Corporate will allow the organization to deliver value to clients in ever-increasing ways. Advances in the technology driven out of one vertical (that is, Higher Ed, Government, or Corporate) can be leveraged in the others. When Corporations and Associations look for an Online Learning system, there will be a variety of factors to be taken into consideration – however, three factors critical to the success of any Online Learning strategy will be the pedagogical foundation of the learning system, its flexibility and design, and the model used to support organizations embarking on an Online Learning journey. 

Follow us as we continue to build out our Online Learning story for Corporate clients in 2012. Watch for news updates, Community events, webcasts, and monthly blogs posts, right here on Desire2Learn.com. Join the conversation – we’d love to hear from you!

Posted in: Corporate Learning Environment Learning Management System

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By John Baker | Published: Friday, January 20, 2012

Reflections on 2011 and Excitement Ahead in 2012

I hope everyone enjoyed the holidays are back to start the New Year with renewed energy and excitement.

In my reflections on 2011 in my ePortfolio, I started with "It was an incredible year." We achieved record growth, adding hundreds of new clients and millions of new learners. We helped our clients migrate hundreds of thousands of their courses from other legacy systems to our next-generation learning system, and we are seeing great momentum on organizations making the choice to move to Desire2Learn products and services. This makes our community of users ever stronger.

Very importantly, we achieved over 98% client retention again this last year. This is a metric that is shared with all our staff throughout the year as it matters to us dearly. We strive to ensure we have the best possible client experience. We are here to make your experience as rewarding as possible.

Stay tuned for a number of new initiatives this year targeted at making you a happier client. We are already seeing amazing interest in our FUSION users' conference this coming July. And we will be hosting another dozen or more regional events around the world that are building on the success of our first couple (and very successful) 2011 regional events.

We were also listening closely to your requests and issues as we released 5 significant versions of our Learning Suite last year and did touch-ups (service packs) 1-2 times a month throughout the year. We continued to make major investments in our software and our cloud-based infrastructure. This investment will increase again in 2012 as we strive for better levels of service for our clients.

Our products and company won numerous awards and certifications last year. One of which we are particularly proud is our work with, and certification from, the National Federation for the Blind. We continued to lead the industry with accessibility and are the first LMS to be recertified by the NFB.

We also saw record employee growth this year as we added over 160 staff to our family of companies, including several new senior leaders. And with the addition of a few new hires in January, we now have a team of 375 people worldwide. We remain focused on continuing that growth this year to ensure we achieve even better levels of service, reliability, and more innovation from our products.

We completed our move into our new space late in 2010, and added a floor in 2011. We share a large complex with Google and the Communitech Hub - a mobile media accelerator center of which we are a founding partner. This is a great environment to help us attract staff. We would love the opportunity to host more of our clients here this year.

It's exciting to be focused on building a great global organization that cares passionately about building lasting relationships with our clients from around the world, and helping them reinvent the learning experience. We are hard at work getting ready for some major new announcements to make your life easier, and helping you make your user's experiences richer, more personalized and engaging. Stay tuned for roadmap discussions and webinars on upcoming releases - you will be excited to see the advancements.

Very special thank you to all our customers, partners, and friends for an outstanding year and looking forward to working with all of you in 2012 and beyond! Together we can achieve even bigger transformations of teaching and learning.

Sincerely,

John Baker
President & CEO
Desire2Learn Incorporated

Posted in: ePortfolio Industry Trends Learning Suite Research and Design Transforming Teaching & Learning

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