February 2007 — News
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First Look: Desire2Learn Essentials
For example, with course content, instructors are provided tools for uploading, managing, and organizing text, images, and other content types. In the discussion area, instructors can create, delete, and otherwise manage forums. And for quizzes and self assessments, it includes the ability to create and grade various forms of tests.
Of course, it also provides a number of statistical and organizational tools. A "Class List" function provides instant access to all participants in a course, including staff and students, with one-click access to e-mail and instant messaging ("paging") through the D2L Web interface (seen below). The "Grades" function provides access to grades for all students in a course, organized automatically by assignments and tests set up within the system by the instructor.
The test engine within D2L Essentials provides a number of tools for creating graded and self-assessment tests, along with management features.
For the creation of tests, some of the specific features include:
- Setting general properties (test name and category, whether to export results to be graded, notification, hints, headers and footers, etc.);
- Setting restrictions (test active dates, prerequisites for taking the test, timing, IP restrictions, passwords, and special access);
- Number of attempts and method for calculating grades across multiple attempts (highest attempt, average of all attempts, etc.);
- Adding activities to a test;
- Determining view options for the user;
- Creating reports for the test (including class average, score distribution, bonus questions, question details, display of student comments, user statistics, etc.); and
- Creating the sections and questions to be included in the test.
Specific question types supported by the system include: true/false, multiple choice, log answer, short answer, multi-select questions, multi-sort answer, fill in the blank, matching, ordering, arithmetic, and significant figures. Questions can also contain textual information, images, hints, and feedback. The image below shows the setup for a true/false question (whose answer is clearly "true").
Test management features include the ability to share tests across multiple courses, share and randomize questions, edit tests individually, set the number of possible attempts at a test, set the method of calculating the grade for a test across multiple attempts, etc.
Setup, availability, compatibility
Desire2Learn Essentials is available now for institutions with fewer than 5,000 users, including colleges, universities, K-12 schools/districts, and e-learning programs. Support and hosting are both provided by Desire2Learn, which says that the system can be set up in about five business days from the time implementation starts. It's compatible with a variety of browsers on Mac and Windows systems.
Pricing is handled on a case by case basis.
More info:
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About the author: Dave Nagel is the executive editor for 1105 Media's educational technology online publications and electronic newsletters. He can be reached at dnagel@1105media.com.
Have any additional questions? Want to share your story? Want to pass along a news tip? Contact Dave Nagel, executive editor, at dnagel@1105media.com.
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