Reflections from D2L Fusion 2011 conference
by Sheila Carlon
I attended several great sessions at the D2L Fusion meeting held in Denver. My two favorite, however, were the ones on Using Social Media to Enhance Online Courses and Academic Analytics.
Using Social Media focused on using this method to connect to that group of students that are used to texting, tweeting and using facebook to send reminders to students about upcoming due dates, brief feedback comments and other short quips the instructor needs to communicate. The best way to use Facebook was not to “friend” students but to create a Fan Page for the course and post announcements and any other pertinent information there. That way you are not intruding on the student’s social life!
The session on Academic analytics was exciting as with D2L, we will eventually be able to get actionable data from the LMS which we haven’t done before. The four areas of analytics: strategic (goals and objectives at the institutional level), administrative (operating effectiveness), academic (student success) and career (career paths) can be dumped into the Business Intelligence software that goes beyond just reporting – you can actually make decisions from the data. We have not had access to administrative analytics with any previous LMS so I think this will be very helpful. (This will not be available for us however until year 2. )
Sheila Carlon, Ph.D., RHIA, CHPS
HSA Division Director
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