|
|
| |
Founded in 1999, Desire2Learn Inc. is a leader in providing innovative eLearning solutions to academic and other leading organizations around the world. Our offerings include our Enterprise
eLearning
Suite, which is comprised of the web-based Learning
Environment, ePortfolio,
Learning
Repository, and LiveRoom. Our focus is on research and development and service and support for our clients, and our products lead the market in innovation and client satisfaction.
Desire2Learn is committed to being the global leader in the development and support of innovative eLearning environments for the education, government and corporate markets. We work collaboratively with our clients in pursuit of their eLearning visions; their success is our measure of achievement. Our future focused platform along with our enterprise service spectrum offer unparalleled scalability, flexibility, expertise, and responsiveness. Ultimately, Desire2Learn enables institutions to customize teaching and education for millions on a one-to-one basis, to achieve boundless learning.
|
EPC
Spotlights... Desire2Learn
Desire2Learn Inc. is a world-leading provider of enterprise eLearning solutions that enable institutions and other organizations to create teaching and learning environments that reflect their vision, values, goals, pedagogical approaches and branding.
Desire2Learn supports over five million learners worldwide and clients include higher education, K-12, as well as associations, government, and other leading organizations.
Desire2Learn continues to be an active supporter of TxDLA as an annual conference exhibitor
and Partner since 2006 and is currently a Silver Partner.
In this interview, we speak with
John Baker, Desire2Learn President & CEO. John shares his insights on some issues facing
Desire2Learn and, in general, distance education.
BT: For those readers that might not be familiar with Desire2Learn, could you please provide me with the quick version of what you are?
JB: Desire2Learn is focused on helping clients improve teaching and learning experiences and making them universally accessible. Desire2Learn offers clients the best platform for eLearning both in and outside of the classroom. Desire2Learn also offers the industry leading
ePortfolio application which is designed to compliment the formal learning experiences with a social learning application that meets the needs of both the user and organization. Other technologies developed by Desire2Learn include a
Learning
Repository, LiveRoom
for synchronous education, a full data warehouse, and a competencies engine. Desire2Learn provides unmatched feature set, security, scalability, flexibility, ease of integration, responsiveness and expertise.
Founded in 1999, Desire2Learn is growing rapidly due to our investment in continuous client-driven innovation and unwavering focus on delivering client successes. We have hundreds of clients globally in higher education, K-12, government, corporate and healthcare.
BT: What do you (or your organization) perceive as the biggest challenge in the marketplace?
JB: Our biggest challenge is ensuring that we support our clients in every possible way to make certain they can meet their objectives. We’ve managed to grow rapidly, and maintain our clients primarily due to the fact we are focused on exceeding client expectations and ensuring they have the best technology and services available to ensure their ongoing success. We also build great flexibility into our technology to embrace all the unique elements of our diverse clients. Consequently, our client centered focus coupled with our innovative approach enables us to provide great products, market leading services and a high degree of value to our clients. We invest heavily in research and development, and are continuously collaborating with our clients to find ways to improve the reach, scope and effectiveness of teaching and learning.
BT: What makes Desire2Learn different from other eLearning vendors?
JB: Desire2Learn is fundamentally committed to the success of our clients and delivering technology that continues to exceed expectations of clients and sets the bar for the industry. Our goal is to provide our clients with flexible, innovative products and services that deliver exceptional quality and outstanding reliability. Our clients can always count on us to meet their expectations for growth and that we are always available to solve their toughest problems. Continued innovation has been the key to ensuring our clients are equipped with technology that enables them to lead the market and maximize learning potential at their organizations.
We involve our clients in the creation and development of our products. As an organization, we are responsive to their needs today and are constantly challenging ourselves to remain the best solution not just for this year but for their needs of the distant future. We are a partner in their success in the outstanding delivery of teaching and learning.
BT: How do the issues of distance learning in Texas compare to those in Canada?
JB: Texas is a vast state that covers very distinct regions where each institution has unique requirements and demands for improving teaching and learning that reach all students in the regions. And like Texas, Canada is stretched over very large geographies, has a history of providing diverse programs from agriculture to high tech to oil and gas, and there has always been great variation in the demands by students of institutions from rural communities to large urban centers.
Our solution stems from the need for our clients to express their unique pedagogical vision in a learning management system. We don’t prescribe one specific way of teaching and learning to our clients. Instead, we work hard to understand their priorities and customize our Learning Environment to meet their unique needs and assist them in realizing their vision for learning. Our experience with implementations such as Georgia Virtual School (at the K-12 level), Oklahoma Board of Regents, Minnesota State Colleges and Universities, or large universities like University of Arizona or The Ohio State University and others has offered us great perspective on how to successfully implement and support a statewide initiative as well as individual districts or colleges.
BT: Ok… the old crystal ball question… what does the future hold for Desire2Learn? Anything new coming our way?
JB: The start of this year has been an exciting time for us. We have released the latest version of Desire2Learn
Learning
Environment and Desire2Learn Learning
Repository with significant feature improvements to make our platform even more intuitive, easy to use, efficient and accessible. We are also very excited about the debut of Desire2Learn
ePortfolio
– to meet the needs of all users and the organizational expectations for reporting and assessment. The response to this new product has been outstanding. Desire2Learn
ePortfolio
extends the learning environment to encompass social learning in addition to formalized learning, and the product is replete with web 2.0 functionality.
On top of these three offers, we have introduced our Web Services product to facilitate the integration of other applications developed by partners and clients with our platform. With this new product, we’ll provide even more functionality, efficiency and scope.
To add to the excitement, we’ve signed up several new clients in the United States and Canada, in addition to moving forward in the United Kingdom and Asia Pacific markets. We continue to hire at an aggressive pace and grow our client base. As always, we are continually working with our clients to develop new and next releases of our products in order to build upon their success. We have a number of exciting products and services slated for the coming months. The year ahead holds enormous promise for us and we are continuing to grow rapidly as a result of our client focus and innovative offerings. We are moving ahead with great confidence.
BT: Describe a distance learning success your organization has experienced?
JB: At the core of our mission is breaking down barriers to quality of education and we can highlight one of many barriers we have tackled with a great deal of success over the years: universal accessibility.
Accessibility is a key factor in developing and designing a learning solution that will enable equal access to education. We have worked very closely with clients such as The Ohio State University, the University of Illinois, University of Wisconsin – Madison, Nottingham Trent University, and many other K-12 and higher education leaders in accessibility to develop the latest version of Desire2Learn Learning Environment. We believe that students should have a robust learning environment that meets their unique needs. With extensive testing, research, and piloting Desire2Learn Learning Environment exceeds all basic accessibility compliance requirements. These capabilities are not just important for clients such as the Washington School for the Deaf but for all institutions to enable a rewarding learning environment for everyone. Our work in this area will never be done as we continue to advance the state-of-the-art with the help of our clients.
BT: Looking through your corporate website, I noticed that your client list ranges from large state-wide implementations to small independent clients in higher education, K12, and even corporate. How does Desire2Learn provide value and support to such a vast client base?
JB: We have a number of large clients that span state-wide consortiums such as the Tennessee Board of Regents and Minnesota State Colleges and Universities (MnSCU) as well as small K-12 districts or smaller colleges such as Temple College in Temple, TX. We are just as committed to our small clients’ success as the larger state-wide rollouts. We have addressed this issue by providing a system that adapts to the needs of the individual and the unique elements of the organization or consortia by using variables and personal settings and without the need for customizing the code. We also ensure that all clients across all sectors are included in a well-established product feature request process, along with design sessions and reviews.
Our platform has proven scalability to support clients with only several hundred users to clients with over a million enrollments a semester. We also provide a competitive costing structure that provides great value to all clients of all sizes. Institutions within a consortium can be quite small in relative terms and can leverage the scale of a large organization for expertise, collaboration and support without giving up their autonomy. Alternatively, whether part of a larger group or not, institutions will be supported by Desire2Learn to the extent that most effectively meets their requirements.
Client satisfaction is paramount for us, from small institutions such as Pacifica Graduate Institute to large consortia such as Oklahoma Board of Regents. We value their support and work with them to improve the learning experience that they provide. Our products are guided and shaped through extensive client input and collaboration.
Each year we invite all of our clients to FUSION our users conference, to come together to connect and share how they are using our technology. They inspire one another with their innovation in teaching and learning. Large or small, our clients are very passionate about pursuing excellence in learning. This year the conference is being held in Memphis, Tennessee, July 20 – 23rd.
BT: I also noticed that Desire2Learn has a Partner Network. Is this a new initiative?
JB: Establishing relationships with organizations to support the needs of clients is nothing new to Desire2Learn. In fact, it is this commitment to our clients that has given rise to the Partner Network. As we have grown, we have come to recognize a need to better communicate and collaborate with solution providers, content publishers and many others focused on working with us to support our clients in eLearning. As a result, we are pleased to offer the Partner Network to support our growing network of industry alliances. The Partner Network governing philosophy is to create win-win-win situations enabling organizations to provide better solutions and services to clients that enrich the eLearning experience.
With the launch of Web Services we are deepening our commitment to our Partner Network. Partners can seamlessly integrate their technology with our product. We are motivated to provide a high quality learning experience that extends our clients’ capacity to offer the best learning experience for all of their users.
BT: In closing, Desire2Learn has some rather impressive goals, like supporting, not only clients in Texas, or even North America, but GLOBALLY. This must really pose some interesting challenges involving language, culture, and so much more. Care to share your biggest challenge there?
JB: We see a tremendous opportunity for our clients to reach out to a rapidly expanding global audience. In higher education alone the expectation is that the number of students will double in the coming decades; most of that growth will be working with international students. As our clients expand their global footprint with partner institutions or satellite campuses around the world, we are committed to delivering the same consistent user experience that represents our clients everywhere. We have recently deepened our resources within the UK and Asian Pacific marketplaces to ensure that our products are relevant and valuable to their specific needs. Overall, we are developing and enhancing our product to be globally accessible on several fronts, including expanding our robust language packs and providing partnership support for clients internationally. With strong client input and market research, we are continuing to provide exceptional support to our expanding client base while building on our capability to serve the needs of global institutions well into the future.
|
