More data from UW-Platteville students

I previously mentioned that the UW-Platteville student senate will be urging their faculty senate to mandate gradebook use of Desire2Learn by their instructors.

Their resolution was based on a 2008 online survey done of UW-P students, the results of which the current vice-president of the student senate generously shared with me. 346 of the 5837 students responded to the survey.

Two questions and results jumped out at me:

1) "Would you be in favor of a mandate that would require ALL UW-Platteville Faculty Members to post Student Exam & Homework grades on D2L?"
YES: 79%
NO: 21%

2) "Do you feel having the chance to view your grades online would increase your motivation in the classroom?"
YES: 80%
NO: 20%

I like the fact that this survey connected use of the online gradebook with motivation in the classroom. It is noteworthy that 80% responded affirmatively to the question.

I can't envision a faculty senate voting in favor of any such mandate, but at the very least, this action by the student senate will heighten the awareness of what students desire in their learning environment.

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 2007	Spring 2008
Total Official Courses	4384	4405
Total Official Courses w/ Activated Learn@UW Sites	1292 (29.5%)	1474 (33.5%)
Total Official Sections	14960	14550
Total Official Sections w/ Activated Learn@UW Sites	4598 (30.7%)	5062 (34.8%)
Total Enrollments in Official Courses w/ Activated Learn@UW Sites	68696	73224
Unique People Using Learn@UW	30658	29449

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...

Wisconsin-Platteville students want faculty mandated to use D2L gradebook

In a move similar to that at Marquette University, the University of Wisconsin-Platteville students senate voted to recommend to their faculty senate a mandate that would require all instructors to use the Desire2Learn gradebook for each course.

Marquette students want faculty to be required to attend one D2L training session and post the course syllabus in D2L. UW-P students want their instructors to be required to use the gradebook at minimum.

Neither resolution has much chance of passing their faculty senates (a previous and broader student resolution at UW-P requiring faculty use of D2L failed to pass through the faculty senate), but these moves indicate that today's students value the use of the course management system--particularly the posting of course materials and use of the online gradebook.

I'm curious as to the extent faculty and instructors are required to use a course management system or attend training, particularly in a hybrid environment (Obviously, many fully-online programs require this.) Of what examples are you aware?

5-Year Review of Desire2Learn at University of Wisconsin-Madison

After 5 years of using D2L as the central course management system (branded "Learn@UW") at UW-Madison, our Academic Technology department asked me to lead a milestone review process. Naively, I said OK to what turned out to be a 10 month project culminating in a 25 page report.

The executive summary and full report are posted at the DoIT Academic Technology site.

Some of the key findings include:

• 30,000 people use Learn@UW each semester at UW-Madison
  
• 77% of students report a positive experience
• 73% of instructors report a positive experience
• Instructors primarily use Learn@UW for course administration
• Students most value convenience and the gradebook
• Instructors report problems with the interface in general and specifically with the quiz and gradebook tools

If you scan the report, do you find anything in it surprising?
Has anyone conducted, or read, a similar report from a university?

D2L's list of court documents

I just realized that Desire2Learn has been posting quite a collection of court documents in a user-friendly page on their patent info site.

Desire2Learn to revise flagship software

D2L's hometown newspaper, The Record (Kitchener/Waterloo, ON), reported today about D2L's strategy for bringing its U.S. customers into a non-infringing status. D2L wants to get as many self-hosted U.S. customers into the soon-to-be-released Learning Environment 8.3.

The tricky part is ensuring that 8.3 is not infringing on Blackboard's controversial patent. D2L sounds confident that its redesigned code will be blessed by all parties. D2L CEO John Baker was quoted:

"We're very confident that 8.3 will be a good workaround," he said. "We're just waiting on the final legal stamp of approval."

The "final legal stamp of approval" is the key point. Blackboard will be allowed to review the new code, and ultimately it would seem that Judge Ron Cook has to find the software to be non-infringing.

The eventual challenge will be for campus technologists to implement a plan that not only complies with the vendor's wishes, but more importantly, ensures for its thousands of faculty and student users a smooth transition to a new version of the software, whenever a transition happens.

Baker, and the rest of us, are still anxiously awaiting developments on a review of the original patent:

"The patent should never have been issued in the first place. We're going to push the courts to recognize that."

Following the Blackboard patent & Desire2Learn issues

Now that an initial verdict has come down against D2L for infringing on Blackboard's patent, a number of issues remain up in the air including the practical implications of the injunction against D2L, a review of the original Blackboard patent, and an appeal to the verdict by D2L.

Here are the best resources I have found for following these developments:

Desire2Learn's patent blog
http://desire2learn.com/patentinfo/
* D2L has provided a great deal of information throughout the process. Obviously, their comments must be constrained by their legal counsel.

Barry Dahl's Desire2Blog
http://desire2blog.blogspot.com/
* Barry is the Vice President of Technology & the Virtual Campus at Lake Superior College which is a D2L customer. Barry seems to have the ear of D2L and their CEO John Baker which makes for interesting content on his site that is frequently updated.

e-Literate by Michael Feldstein
http://mfeldstein.com
* Michael is a product manager for Oracle and former online learning leader at SUNY Learning Network. In addition to his insightful commentary and useful links, he recently hosted an eye-witness account of the Bb-D2L trial on his blog.

The NOSE by Alfred Essa
http://tatler.typepad.com/nose/
* Al is the Associate Vice Chancellor and Deputy CIO at Minnesota State Colleges and Universities. He frequently writes about e-learning, open source, and specifically the Bb-D2L patent issue. MNSCU is also a D2L customer.

Let me know if you recommend other similar resources.

UPDATE: OK, in all fairness, I should also link to Blackboard's patent site:
http://blackboard.com/patent/
Just compare it's content with that of D2L's patent info site. The recent letter to the "Blackboard Community" has been loosely translated by Barry Dahl. Enjoy.