D2L Conversion Process

Hi Everyone-

This fall we are moving all CCCOnline courses to Desire2Learn. Over the summer the Instructional Designers and the Academic Technology groups have been working to get the first two steps of the conversion process taken care of. That included converting course shells from BB Vista and taking care of some basic clean-up of those shells. Beginning at the Faculty Conference on the 25th you will get access to those course shells in D2L. There will still be some clean-up that will need to take place as well as all of the standard changes and updates that have to be made to a shell each semester (assessment dates, etc.) The Design Team and Training and Professional Development have developed 2 check-lists, so everyone will know which updates have been taken care of by the designers and what is left to do. Just as a reference, final clean-up of my class took me less than an afternoon and that was with interruptions.)

Training for all of you will also begin at the Faculty Conference. Just before the conference everyone will be loaded into a Faculty Community Shell. All of the training materials for D2L will be in that shell as well as spaces for the Design Team and your Program Chairs. We hope this area will help us simplify the communication flow and also give you one quick place to look for any piece of information you need.

We are planning to use the Faculty Mentor model for primary faculty support again. Many of you remember the "Vista Volunteers" from the last LMS conversion process. Once again each program will have a D2L Mentor who will be your primary contact for support both this fall as you update and clean-up your master course shells and in the spring as you teach in D2L for the first time. The mentors are teaching in D2L this fall as pilot faculty and have tested the faculty training materials as well.

The critical due date for completion of both course updates and training will be November 14th. On that date we want to begin the course duplication process for the spring term.

Last, a note about student support: The student help desk (Perceptis) is already supporting students in D2L this fall in the pilot courses. Deb Michel and Kathy Miles are updating the student wiki with additional student support materials and plan to have a student orientation ready to go for spring. More about the specifics of training in the next post.

Best,

Lisa Cheney-Steen
(Photo is of Hanging Lake near Glenwood Springs)