Upon returning to classes after weeks of winter break, students noticed a change in their routine log in to the campus’ online Learning Management System, Desire2Learn.
The site that helps students manage their syllabi, interact with their professors and fellow classmates, and organize assignments and grades had a few physical changes while we were away. While most of the tabs and content are the same, with an updated layout and other minor adjustments, Desire2Learn has a crisp new appearance with some additional features to benefit students.
“Desire2Learn is extremely helpful at a college institution since it allows professors to communicate easily with their students, not just with grades but with messages as well,” Alex Sobczak said, a transfer student at DePaul University who didn’t use Desire2Learn at her previous college.
After leaving the Desire2Learn tab open on your computer for more than a few minutes while doing other things, you then have to weed through annoying pop-ups that ask if you are still actively using the website. The new edition of Desire2Learn allows you to prevent the site from logging you out after a period of inactivity, meaning you can leave the Desire2Learn page open and logged in while completing a reading or paper and revisit it without any difficulties.
Another unique feature that was added to the new Desire2Learn interface was that of notifications that appear similar to that of Facebook. A little red dot will appear at the top left of the screen when you have an assignment due or quiz approaching, clicking the red dot then leads to a pull down menu where you can click on the exact assignment and be relocated to the assignment page.
“I think the notifications are a great add, I find that students see notifications as reminders to keep them organized,” Mike Reilley, a journalism instructor at DePaul, said.
There were also a few adjustments made to Campus Connect, mostly affecting faculty navigation.
“I haven’t found it to be more difficult, I just took the time to see what changes were made and where things were relocated,” said Reilley.
With the updates to both Desire2Learn and Campus Connect, the sites may be unfamiliar to students and faculty from what they are used to.
“As professors, we have to be dynamic and change and adjust with advancing technology,” Reilley said, “It’s part of the job now, in a month I don’t think anyone will be complaining.”
In order to keep up with new and updating devices and browsers, the software needed some changes made. The software marketplace is constantly changing and the system that we use at DePaul needs to keep up in order to be compatible with the newest devices. Students were sent an email during winter break that described the changes being made to Desire2Learn and how they could navigate the new changes with video tutorials, which were also available on Desire2Learn’s homepage.
“The notifications that students can subscribe to including getting notifications when quiz due dates are two days away, as well as when content pages have been updated,” Melissa Koenig, Associate Director of Faculty Instructional Technology Services at DePaul, said.
According to Koenig, updates to the system will continue to happen throughout our time as students at DePaul.
Although students have different ways of maintaining their classes and organizing their assignments, some may turn to Desire2Learn more so now than before, due to the updated interface being more interactive. However, students become accustomed to how their professors teach, some of which not using Desire2Learn, so the instinct to check the program sometimes isn’t there.
“I like the notification aspect, but the problem is that I don’t check my D2L constantly, a lot of times I use my printed out syllabus for keeping up with assignments,” Adina Garneata, a student at DePaul, said.
Some students hope that the updates made to Desire2Learn will give professors more of an incentive to use the program.
“It makes it easier to locate readings and stay updated on my grades,” Garneata said.