D2L Site Changes

BY JESSICA HEITZMAN
SC Staff Writer

Desire 2 Learn is a program used by ESU along with hundreds of other colleges across the nation. The program is used by professors that students may go on to view power points, syllabi, view discussion board content or even take quizzes online.

The program isn’t used by every professor; in fact, there are some that can’t stand the program. To make matters worse, D2L got a makeover and now looks worse than ever.

The site, once easy to navigate, is now a problem to many students and professors.

“My professor doesn’t even use D2L,” said an anonymous student. “He absolutely hates the program.”

Well, he’s going to have more of a problem with it. After logging in to D2L and finding which class you want to look at, the layout is completely different than the previous version.

All of the possible tab choices that a student could click on are missing. Instead, there are only four menus, three of which are dropdowns: Content, Resources, Communication and Assessments.

The Content tab has no dropdown menu and can be viewed by clicking on the menu box where professors have content available to students.

The Resources box is ultimately never used because it comes down to the professor whether or not he or she wants to put any content under this area (none of my professors do). Unfortunately, it looks like wasted space.

The Communications tab is about the only menu that is worth looking at for students. Here students can find the discussion board and the classlist. The only issue with this tab is that the classlist should not be under the Communications tab, but it should be under the Resources tab.

Finally, the Assessments tab hosts student quizzes and the dropbox which are the only two important tabs here.

These “organizing” tabs sound like a great idea, but it was much easier, in the previous version of D2L, for students just to look across the menu bar that listed all of the available options. Students didn’t have to try and find, through the use of dropdown menus, what they were looking for.

One thing that students may not know is that the university pays for D2L; it’s not a university made site. With that being said, if professors aren’t using more than half of the programs offered to D2L (I’m not suggesting it’s their fault) then it seems that the school is wasting our money on a program that no one even likes.

Some students don’t agree that the site is so bad. “I don’t see what the hype is all about with everyone getting frustrated,” says Jessica Shultz, a sophomore and Business major. “Yeah, at first it was weird, but it was new. It’s the same site just red and black.”

On a more positive note, the “My Courses” section lists students’ courses by the most recent semester, whereas the older version of D2L had the classes grouped by department, making it difficult to find the specific class you’re trying to find.

Not everyone will be happy with change, but it’s something we all must get over. D2L doesn’t look like it’s going anywhere, so the stubborn students out there better get used to it and learn to navigate the program.

Email Jessica at:
jmh2643@live.esu.edu