iCIT’s own David Delgado and Lorna Wong recently presented several sessions at the 2006 Desire2Learn Users Conference in Toronto. The conference gives D2L users the opportunity to learn a variety of strategies and techniques for making the most of their implementations of Desire2Learn.
David conducted a session on “Creative Uses of Navigation Bars”. Using UW-Whitewater’s instance of D2L as an example, he demonstrated how to enhance the look of a navigation bar as a whole, as well as how to emphasize certain areas. He went on to cover the addition of new functionality to navigation bars, such as web site search boxes and access to websites outside of D2L. Code and image examples were provided to participants and are available at D2L’s Community website as well as David’s personal website.
Together, David and Lorna presented a session on “Using RSS Feeds to Provide Rich and Dynamic Course Content”. This session demonstrated the mechanics of including RSS feeds and podcasts into D2L courses. Discussion focused on how and where to find good RSS feeds on discipline-specific topics and suggestions for their effective integration into a course. The strategy was well received. An increasing number of D2L users from various institutions now use the Whitewater’s setup to build their RSS feeds in D2L.
Lorna joined Ellen Rosewall (UW-Green Bay) to share how four UW campuses creatively and collaboratively used D2L to create an online Arts Management course through a UW-System Curricular Redesign grant. They demonstrated how consistency in curriculum between programs can be improved, while still recognizing the strengths of individual instructors from different campuses. They went on to show how collaboration can be accomplished online via the D2L platform even when the players are geographically dispersed.
As part of a quartet of UWW presenters, Lorna presented “Get Organized! Effectively Structuring Your Course in D2L”. This session addressed techniques for organizing D2L courses in such a way as to enable students to focus on the course content, tasks, and learning outcomes, meanwhile enabling instructors to efficiently create and maintain their courses.
In addition to sharing their expertise, David and Lorna also learned a lot as participants in the conference. “I think our biggest accomplishment was the attendance of a number of faculty – even in Canada,” said Lorna. “The D2L Users Conference offers a great opportunity to find out how others are using the D2L platform creatively, to learn the direction the D2L company is headed in terms of product development, and to build a community of support staff who face the same challenges in the fast-growing field of e-learning.”