Friday, April 25, 2008

Learn@UW/D2L usage at UW-Madison

I've always found it a challenge to answer the question "What percentage of courses (or sections depending on who's asking) use Learn@UW?"

First of all, at UW-Madison, we are a ginormous institution with a lot of instruction taking place in every shape and mode imaginable. Defining "course" and "section" is a tough task.

Recently, I attempted to figure this out with the help of staff that work with our student information system. I limited stats-gathering to official/timetable courses, including the professional schools, including independent study courses, excluding study abroad and excluding any bogus courses that the registrar's office creates. Also all members of cross-listed courses are counted as separate courses. All combined sections are counted separately, not aggregated. Phew.

Here are our results:
Fall 2007Spring 2008
Total Official Courses43844405
Total Official Courses w/ Activated Learn@UW Sites1292 (29.5%)1474 (33.5%)
Total Official Sections1496014550
Total Official Sections w/ Activated Learn@UW Sites4598 (30.7%)5062 (34.8%)
Total Enrollments in Official Courses w/ Activated Learn@UW Sites6869673224
Unique People Using Learn@UW3065829449


My director, Kathy Christoph summarized it nicely: Learn@UW is being used in about 1/3 of the courses by nearly 3/4 of the students for an average of about 2.5 courses each.

At this large R1 university, I'm personally pleased with 33% usage of the central course management system. Also on our campus, there is a number of local schools and departments using other course management systems such as Moodle or their homegrown solution which raises the overall saturation numbers. But that's another story for another day...

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