Charlese Freeman

Students Life Editor 

The Office of Multicultural affairs is now using D2L to reach the student population. 

Students in multicultural organizations can access information about events via D2L. Students who identify as no white have a new icon available on their D2L homepage. 

 “I’m hoping it [the new feature] will have an impact like D2L has on student learning,” said OMA director, Juanita Jenkins. 

According to ESU’s Office of Multicultural Affairs home page, the department serves as an advocate and resource for students from diverse cultural backgrounds and coordinates the activities for student organizations representing the interests of these underrepresented groups. 

The vision for the new icon on D2l is to penetrate places students currently utilize. Jenkins says the D2l feature is a learning vehicle. 

“If you all drive it, we’ll put gas in it,” said Jenkins.  

With Brightspace updating the D2L software, the system has many new features and ways for students to learn and access their courses.  

More multicultural students will receive exposure to OMA on their D2L page. One downside to the new icon is it does not have a counter feature. This means that the department has no way to count or access how many students have used or viewed the page.  

The ability for teachers to view student activity is a useful resource that helps track and monitor progress. With this feature the department, could see the areas of improvement.  

Jenkins said because the university has a slow emailing system, she will receive many bounce-back emails and manual emails are too time consuming.  

About 6,500 students are enrolled at ESU and a little under half are multicultural students. The OMA icon informs students of events and tells students the mission statement and goals of OMA.   

The department has found success in its Instagram and hopes to find it with the new D2L feature. OMA wants to continue to reach students of many cultures on campus. This new icon attempts to encourage minority student activity on campus. 

Email Charlese at:

cfreeman2@live.esu.edu