Notes from the Field: Migration to Desire2Learn

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Back in June, in “Resistance Is Futile: Embracing an LMS Migration,” I wrote about the challenges of SNL Online’s migration of about eighty fully online courses to Desire2Learn. I’d like to revisit some of the key discoveries and thoughts.

Time Is Not on Your Side

How much time do you think you’ll need to implement the learning management system, get all the stakeholders on board and trained, and successfully migrate your courses? Double that. Then double it again. You’ll thank me later.

It Won’t Happen That Way

As mentioned before, the migration tool that was supposed to make transferring courses from Blackboard to Desire2Learn easy didn’t work as advertised, which shouldn’t surprise anyone who’s sat through any vendor demo and then worked with an actual instantiation of the product. What was billed as a relatively seamless and problem-free process has been anything but, with a difficult and ongoing integration process with PeopleSoft making our production timelines irrelevant. Key tools, roles, and functionalities we’d relied on having either aren’t yet available or never will be, putting our design specs constantly in flux and making our production workflow reactive and inefficient. It’s certainly not the end of the world, but even our conservative estimates of production time and costs have proven overly optimistic in light of the D2L/PeopleSoft integration difficulties.

Did I Mention You’ll Need More Time?

We have a lot of talented people working really hard to make sure everything works as it should and ensure that this migration is a success for students and faculty. And they’re discovering on roughly a weekly basis that things we thought would work don’t. They need more time to test everything, and so will you.

An Ounce of Prevention

Our course design specs are the result of an iterative process that included a couple of rounds of user tests with students and faculty. As a result I’m able to rely upon real data when I work with faculty to explain our new design and protocols. I’m pleased to say that most seem to understand and appreciate what we’ve done and why. Some don’t though, and a disproportionate amount of time and energy is expended trying to sell them something that has already been made departmental policy. You might avoid this uncomfortable situation by bringing stakeholders to the table at the beginning of the migration planning. Of course, that will likely delay things, which will require yet more time.

Pain Is Growth

It’s really easy to get caught up in the stress of things and lose sight of the goal and its rewards. Disruptive and maddeningly frustrating as much of this process has been, we should ultimately have a much better learning environment for students and faculty. I’m learning I can juggle more cats than I’d imagined, and I marvel at the talent of my co-workers and the grace they show under pressure. Because of their dedication we’ll have a shiny new LMS ready to roll out in January. I’ll keep you posted.

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