How is Desire2Learn Learning Suite Different?
Reinventing Learning Experiences
Founded to Transform the Learning Experience
- Entire team is focused on helping our clients deliver transformative learning experiences and break down barriers
Innovative Culture
- Numerous client events, conferences, and thought leadership sessions
Investment in R&D
- Greater than 40% of team focused on research and development
Breadth of Integrated Solutions
- Valuable R&D partnerships with clients
- Full suite of integrated learning technology that allow for open integration of other systems (best of both worlds)
- Capture webcasting solution to effortlessly capture rich-media presentations, and broadcast to online audiences
- Learning Insights for tracking, analyzing, and assessing student achievement over time and at multiple levels
- Video Note capability to record and embed short videos within courses, or to provide feedback or assignment instructions
- Assignment Grader – free offline grading app with ability to import rubrics, support for personalized audio/video feedback, document viewer and markup of pdf submissions
- Lifelong ePortfolio providing learners with the ability to document their learning journey, and share their achievements with peers and evaluators beyond their graduation date
Proven Track Record
Building Long Term Relationships
- 14 year track record of ensuring security has been a priority, and ongoing security reviews with each release
- Numerous clients with 3, 5, or even 10-year agreements
Client Focused
- >98% client retention
Scaling Effectively
- Over 700 people in the company supporting over 700 clients globally
- Building stronger relationships with over 700 clients at events like FUSION and regional user forums, and through an open user-driven community
Broad Partner Resources
- Content support from most major publishers and open import tools for the rest
- Standard offerings for ERP/SIS integrations, publishers, and common 3rd party products and infrastructure, etc.
- Open platform allows seamless integration of additional solutions
Easy Migration
- Import courses from major LMS solutions
- Migrate hundreds of thousands of client courses at no cost, each year
- One example was a migration of approximately 350,000 courses and retraining of 10,000 instructors within 3 months (not that you need to move that fast)
Architecture
Cloud Service Built for Clients
- Upgrades of cloud offerings are on a client's schedule & you won't be surprised with a new quiz tool in the middle of exams
- Always time to try new features prior to rollout
- Greater control over where the data is stored for privacy regulations or security mandates, if needed
- 99.9% Uptime guarantee
Automated Peak Load Management
- Free additional server resources as clients scale up and no charge for bandwidth for standard use
Automatic Data Replication and Storage Management (Automated Backup)
- Basic data replication option included at no cost. Your data is automatically backed up in near real-time on secure, geographically diverse servers
Latest Generation of Technology
- Latest generation technology that is proven to scale and allows us to develop for all platforms, including C# and .NET
- REST/JSON-based APIs that can be accessed by a wide array of technology and devices
- Proven to scale to millions of users
Hands-free Updates
- Regardless of whether you manage Desire2Learn on premise, leverage shared services, or use our Desire2Learn Cloud, Desire2Learn offers the option for hands-free upgrades so you can run the latest version and upgrade at times convenient for you
- Leverage test and development servers for trying out the next version in advance of the upgrade
Security
- Security patches are automatically installed as soon as they are available to all clients (with pre-approval), ensuring that your system is secure
- Free SSL is available to all clients to make sure that all data is encrypted and secure
- All user data is stored in secure, state-of-the-art datacenters, and monitored 24/7/365
Openness
Software License
- Open and Commercial
- Freely available open APIs with commercial support
- Commercial license for core technology
- Ability to do integrations without changing the core code
Standards Leader
- One of the first companies to support SCORM, IMS BLTI, IMS CC, and many other open standards
- Active participation (director and chair several groups)
Open Educational Resources
- Support for Creative Commons publishing
- Provide easy access to millions of open educational resources using open standards like SRU and OAI-PMH
Regular Security Audits & Reviews
- 14 year track record of ensuring security has been a priority, and ongoing security reviews with each release
- Security certifications for government clients and additional advanced certifications in progress
- Regular privacy reviews to ensure we are protecting our client data and information
- Ability to sign-up for automatic (no downtime) security updates for both cloud and on-premises clients
Features
Advanced LMS Functionality
- Dozens of other features not found in any other LMS
- Advanced tools like Desire2Learn Course Builder™ and Instructional Design Wizard™ save clients tens of thousands of dollars in time savings and reduced course development efforts to help improve the quality of course
- Automated rollover from old to new course offerings, including seamless updates of all dates and settings
- Advanced section and group management
- Automatic calendar sync with phones and other calendar systems such as Google or Microsoft Outlook calendar systems
- Special access configurations for different users is accomplished quickly and easily (e.g. give different dates or amount of time for different users for an assessment or learning activity)
- Intelligent Agents to trigger notifications and action using complex rules with personalized messaging
Integrated Learning Outcomes
- Support for accreditation process and help with improving the quality of client programs
- Flexible learning outcome assessment tools and rubrics
Integrated Community Management System
- Full email system not found in other LMSs
- Community spaces and tools
Free Mobile Applications
- HTML5 mobile web application
- Assignment Grader offline grading app for instructors
Social Applications
- Industry's leading ePortfolio, and many other social tools including instant messaging, email, blogging, and hundreds of third party integrations including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn©, Google, Microsoft Office, and many more integrations
Usability + Accessibility
Ease of Use
- 85%+ prefer using the Desire2Learn platform compared to past systems, and most clients report far lower support calls (from student and faculty surveys in Wisconsin, Ohio, Tennessee, and other locations)
Accessibility
- NFB Gold Certification, first LMS to be re-certified
- Go beyond Section 508 to support WAI guidelines (e.g. WCAG 2.0, ATAG 2.0, and WAI-ARIA)
- Support Non-Disclosure of disability or Individualization
- Preferred LMS for accessibility (equal access to everyone for everything)
- Active Special Interest Group with clients and other leaders that has year round impact on product
- Focused on not just our system being accessible, but helping our clients build accessible content and systems
- Learn more about our Accessibility
Happy Power Users
- Polished user experience and numerous power user features to keep all users happy, not just the novice
- We deliver flexibility and usability within a comprehensive feature set, not just usability by simplicity
