I hope we’ve gotten past the point where some instructors out there believe the Learning Management System is only for online classes. At the very least, it’s a great way for instructors in a face-to-face class to post the syllabus and other course documents and to e-mail students between class meetings. But Learning Management Systems, like Desire2Learn, have so much more to offer to the face-to-face class, especially if you’re one of those instructors who never seems to have enough class time to cover everything. Here are some ideas for using Desire2Learn to get more out of your class time.

• Course Q&A Discussion – Set up a discussion area for questions about course or assignment requirements to minimize the amount of class time you spend on these questions. Any question you answer online will be permanently accessible to other students with the same question later. There’s an added benefit to you, because there’s a possibility a more attentive student will answer questions so you don’t have to.
• Set up Groups – If you use groups in your class and have students select their own groups, consider using the D2L Groups tool instead. You can post a description of what each group will have to cover and have students choose which group they want to belong to. D2L allows you to set up how many groups you want or select the maximum numbers of members for each group.
• Primer Discussions – If you like to start your class with a discussion to get students thinking about the subject-matter, consider moving these discussions online and having your students respond before class. You can even pull up your course site on the projector at the beginning of class to highlight certain student responses.
• Course Introductions – You want to allow your students to get to know each other, but you don’t want to use class time for all of your students to tell everyone their interests and aspirations. Set up a discussion area, or simply ask your students to fill out their profile.
• Assignments for the First Class – You won’t win any popularity contests, but if you have a lot of material to cover, and your course only meets once a week, you might want your student to do some reading before the first class. Use D2L to email your students and post a news announcement to tell students they have an assignment before the class starts.

These are just a few ideas. The possibilities are endless. If you’re a DePaul instructor and need some help getting started, we encourage you to contact the FITS department.