D2L Fusion conference summary: Joyce

Guest post by Joyce Johnson, CPS Learning Design, Regis University

HEADLINES

• V10.2 – knowledge/information gained from talking to others who have upgraded.  Also, having the ability to have the hands on experience using the new version during some of the sessions.
• Support Meeting: I came away feeling like D2L really cared about Regis.  Had we not had the meeting I doubt that we would have received the “free” refresh of our test server.
• Collaborating with others, talking about how the system is used, managed, courses developed, etc. PRICELESS.

BEST SESSION OR MEETING

Surviving Your Next Upgrade – presented by Vida Barker, Centennial College of Applied Arts and Technology: The session provided a great deal of insight to the upgrade process: things to considers, strategies for mapping changes from the test server to the production server as well as some new ideas for informing and training faculty.

BEST THINGS IN THE EXPO

• Binder – learners would find this tool very useful specifically the annotation feature and the ability to arrange content to suite their learning style

Poster Session:

• Minnesota State University: linking the QM template into courses
• Northland Community and Technical College: Intelligent Agents

BIGGEST SURPRISES

• Semester Start Planning –presented by D2L: the analysis of issues and strategies that D2L is putting into place to resolve term start issue.  The Change Freeze that has been put into place.  Account Manager: are we not being informed of these changes because we do not have an account manager?
• Support: D2L is putting a lot of things into place to provide better support.  However, they have not addressed major issues that were identified a year ago (at the last conference, through tickets, etc.).
• Rapid Version Changes: many are worried that too many changes will come too fast and that existing issues will not be addressed.  Forced upgrades because older versions will not be supported.
• Enhancement Request – D2L stated that they should be placed on their Community website.  The more people that are interested in the enhancement, the more D2L takes it into consideration for development

BEST IDEAS

• Town Hall meeting for faculty: a strategy for showing and informing faculty of the changes in the new version. This would not be a training session, just a show and tell with Q&A.
• Term Start documents developed by D2L.  We should incorporate those items/documents into our processes.