Having worked with instructors over the summer and during the fall quarter on transitioning from Blackboard to Desire2Learn, I understand the frustration and confusion many have experienced regarding DePaul’s decision to change learning management systems.

As one of the participants in the LMS review, I tested Moodle, Angel, Desire2Learn, and Blackboard 9. I’ll cut through all the pros and cons and just say that I thought Blackboard 9 would be the best decision because we were already using Blackboard 8. Obviously, the decision has been made to move to Desire2Learn, and that isn’t going to change.

Instead of talking about why I wanted to switch to Blackboard 9 or why we should all appreciate (or hate) Desire2Learn, I’d rather talk about the confusion and frustration in moving to Desire2Learn.

I am teaching a section of WRD 103, Composition and Rhetoric I, this quarter, and I am using Desire2Learn as a supplement for the course. I post my daily agenda, readings, assignment sheets, and other “stuff” on my course site. So far, none of my students have had any trouble accessing the course site or the materials there, and while some might give Desire2Learn’s usability all the credit for that, I’d say that my students’ determination and experience with networked computer interfaces helped them more.

I personally haven’t had any major headaches in using Desire2Learn. I never taught in Blackboard so I can’t compare the teaching experience, but I have built and provided support for about a hundred courses in Blackboard in the past two years. Fundamentally, the process for building “stuff” in either LMS is the same. You click buttons, point to files or areas in the course, type, and click more buttons. I’d argue that an instructor who knows how to build course content in Blackboard could do the same in Desire2Learn once he or she finds the appropriate buttons in Desire2Learn. I think Blackboard users are having a harder time finding the appropriate buttons in Desire2Learn because it uses a horizontal navigation instead of a vertical navigation like Blackboard.

Desire2Learn:

Blackboard:

Neither navigation is inherently better; it’s a matter of becoming familiar with one or the other, or in my case, both. I think a lot of faculty and staff are initially confused that there isn’t a menu along the left-hand side of the screen, and out of this confusion arises frustration.

Sometimes, confusion and frustration can be productive. But in the cases I’ve seen faculty experience frustration and confusion with Desire2Learn, they tend to manifest in negative, unhelpful ways. It generally follows a script something like this: “Help, I can’t figure ‘X’ tool out. What do I do? Desire2Learn is so dumb/hard to use. Why did the university even decide to switch to this? It’s so stupid. You know, there have been schools or departments where the faculty refuse to adopt a new LMS.”

I certainly sympathize with this sentiment, but I tend to think it’s a waste of time. My advice would be to just forget about how you did thing in Blackboard, Angel, or whatever other learning management system you were in before, and just think more generally about computing. When you get some new software, you can rely on your prior knowledge to expect that the “File” menu in the new software will be similar to the “File” menu in other, similar software. So the “Content” link in Desire2Learn is going to be similar to the various course content areas in Blackboard, like “Course Materials,” “Readings,” and “Instructor Information.” So when I said that it’s less about Desire2Learn and more about my students’ determination and experience with networked computer interfaces that has helped them with becoming familiar with Desire2Learn, I’m hoping you can find a similar determination and can call on previous general computing knowledge to help you.

I leave you with a flowchart to help with figuring out Desire2Learn: (ref)