By Jeff McDowell | Published: Thursday, November 15, 2012
We Accept the Challenge!
Joshua Kim wrote a great blog on “Inside Higher Ed” post-EDUCAUSE that was well timed given a lot of the conversations we’re having internally about how we tell the Desire2Learn story. It’s his view that customers of Desire2Learn and the broader community have very different views of who we are and what we have to offer.
The greatest testament to what we do and how we do it is that our customers tell our story in a positive, passionate and effusive manner. As Josh notes, those who know us and understand what we deliver first hand through their own experience are huge advocates. That says a lot and makes me proud of what we’ve built and how we’ve partnered with our customers over the years.
It’s a history built on the established and proven track record of a tireless team and an expanding product suite we continue to innovate around our customer needs no matter how diverse the stakeholders – from faculty and teachers, administration and IT to the student and learner that exists at the center of everything we challenge ourselves to do. This is the real story of capabilities, progress and partnership that sums up who we are.
It’s easy to get lost in the other story that Josh alludes to. The story is built on confusion in a market where perceived benefits of emerging technologies are sometimes prioritized above actual system performance. When we talk about the cloud, our solution is a true cloud environment that follows the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) definitions like those put out by NIST.
Over 90 percent of our clients have made the move to our cloud which makes us the largest SaaS provider of learning technology in education. We’d be happy to share more about how we build the best cloud environments that also allow for the greatest ability to reflect the unique nature of our clients instead of a cookie-cutter approach – which is a very positive differentiator that we’ve never really talked about.
Our learning environment is clearly social and fully embraces what people have come to expect in Web 2.0. Our features and the technology we have built are incredibly robust - designed with the flexibility to serve the most sophisticated learning cultures, while maintaining a strong consistent focus on serving that up in a way that is intuitive and relevant to all members of the learning community. It’s not just about faculty ease of use or IT controls but about the recognition that all these important needs can be served with one very elegant solution. Our customers aren’t confused about any of this.
D2L will always be focused on transforming teaching and learning to make the world a better place. We do it by helping our customers take advantage of virtual and blended learning environments that address scale and personal learning at the same time. Together we see advantages of being able to educate more and more students, in an optimized fashion (i.e. flipped classroom) with a much more personalized learning path tailored to the individual. It’s not about the technology but what the technology enables in partnership with our customers.
I am proud to hear that those who know us best are telling that story. 7, maybe 8 years ago D2L started to see exponential growth by virtue of the kinds of customer sentiments that Josh was hearing at EDUCAUSE. And we will continue to experience that kind of momentum because together we can deliver on the promise of improving the quality of teaching and learning. This is our story, and the good news is we’ve learned that it’s time to tell this story a lot louder and with greater clarity.
Thanks for the challenge Josh!
-Jeff
Jeff McDowell
Vice President, Market Development
Posted in: Corporate
0 Comments:
Post A Comment:
Editor's Note: Comments that appear on the site are not the opinion of Desire2Learn Incorporated or its subsidiaries, but only of the comment writer. Personal attacks, offensive language and unsubstantiated allegations are not permitted.
