Comments on: Brightspace nee Desire2Learn

By: Hack Education Weekly News: BS, the New LMS | Articleroster.com

Hack Education Weekly News: BS, the New LMS | Articleroster.com — Mon, 21 Jul 2014 03:21:08 +0000

[…] Desire2Learn rebrands as Brightspace. The new LMS is BS. Or something. […]

By: dnorman

dnorman — Sun, 20 Jul 2014 19:53:26 +0000

Agreed on all points, George. The only reason I needed to write the post in the first place is that it feels like the company is at a pivotal point in their growth – they will need to decide which way they finish the transition to a Real Company. There are signs that the enterprise sales side of things are gaining louder voices, which is worrying. They only people we’ve had contact with at the company that left us feeling lied to and taken for granted were executives from their sales group. I hope they adjust back toward the emphasis on teaching-and-learning, and veer away from the path they’re on. They aren’t IBM or Oracle. That’s why they’re interesting. Here’s hoping the next big press release is written by humans, rather than Enterprise Synergy Leveraging Engineers.

By: George Kroner

George Kroner — Sun, 20 Jul 2014 18:58:06 +0000

D'Arcy, it was great to finally meet you at #D2LFUSION. While I share your concerns, I do feel that the way we feel is in part the nature of a maturing industry. Edtech as we know it has reached its teen-aged years and is indeed "growing up." This is why I feel it's now more important than ever to support innovation "at the edge." It's a shift that we are all still getting used to, but this is where the particularly cool stuff is happening - eg: the tools and content that support specific disciplines and pedagogies that would never make too much sense as part of a core LMS product. It was encouraging to me to learn at this conference how D2L is approaching the challenges of playing well with other solutions in the space.

D2L's challenge now, like other companies in the space, is that at the end of the day they are a software company whose roots are strongly in the education space. And this often means that the lines of audience and purpose while aligned are sometimes blurred. Maybe the messaging was a little too far down corporate-speak this year, but in some ways I do think D2L sees their role shifting to be an enabler that allows us to use the tools and techniques we choose to do the teaching and learning. (For me, I was actually surprised by how many instructional folks were present and telling stories about how they were using the product rather than talking about the product itself.) And so long as they continue to provide good quality software, retain their many phenomenal employees, and seek to support the latest practices in terms of open standards and interoperability, I won't get too worried about their marketing messages. :-)

By: dnorman

dnorman — Sun, 20 Jul 2014 15:05:37 +0000

Yeah. Looks like the old community site is back up as an archive - that should have been the default state before the announcement, so we didn't have to ask about it, though. I just signed up to be invited to participate in the new community site, as well. Not sure what that's about. Feels like it was rushed out the door before the paint was dry in order to make the Fusion deadline…

By: Desire2Wha? |e-Literate

Desire2Wha? |e-Literate — Sun, 20 Jul 2014 14:16:30 +0000

[…] of the conference and broader observations about shifts in the company’s culture, read D’Arcy Norman’s post. I’ve been following D’Arcy since I got into blogging ten years ago and have learned to […]

By: Jason Hampton

Jason Hampton — Sun, 20 Jul 2014 13:59:07 +0000

D'Arcy! 7:56am on a Sunday morning & I finally finished reading this blog post. Typical haha. 3 days after the conference this still sounds right to me. I noticed the archive on the Community site though & activity there has resumed. Perhaps the ship will be righted in the end.

By: David Porter

David Porter — Thu, 17 Jul 2014 18:27:19 +0000

D'Arcy, really? You didn't think D2L would move in a BS direction eventually?

By: dnorman

dnorman — Wed, 16 Jul 2014 22:10:44 +0000

I had a really good conversation with John Baker after the closing keynote – to his credit, he reached out directly to discuss this post, and wanted to make sure we knew that teaching and learning is still absolutely the focus of the company. Part of the problem is that this was the end of a 2-year rebranding exercise, and they forgot that we all haven’t been along for the ride and so didn’t have any of the back story. After the chat, I’m much more confident in the company. They have some work to make sure they’re communicating their vision, and that the branding/marketing folks don’t get too far ahead of things. I am still confident that they’re the right partner – they have some work to do on communicating their vision, but the people are all in place, and they all care deeply about the original teaching-and-learning core of the company.

By: Andy F.

Andy F. — Wed, 16 Jul 2014 21:01:36 +0000

I'm sorry I missed meeting you at the conference. We too have been drawn to D2L for their "in the weeds" teaching and learning perspective, and I know that this new posturing has made a lot of people uncomfortable. When the product spotlight encompasses such a broad ecosystem of needs, it's hard to get excited. And therefore, they don't have the same excitement as talking about addressing simple irks like getting rid of the Java equation editor, or updates to discussions that impact the every-day lives of users.

I chatted with a few people about this drift and while I think it's critical that we all understand that this is a manifestation of the change we're sensing in higher ed. (and one company's sincere desire (or just D) to lead in it), the audience at the user conference never seems quite right. But who is the audience, and who doesn't this change affect?

I still came away from this conference with the same confidence that D2L is who I want to be partnered with in this massive change, even if it has lost some of the comfort and familiarity of the small, manageable learning environment paradigm. I saw so many examples of fellow institutions and D2L staff rising to meet and embrace these serious, major, and difficult changes that I always lament that more of our faculty, admins, and students couldn't attend.

I appreciate the new name as well. So apparently I'm buying in to D2L's BS.