No More Desire2Learn

*** The Tin Soldier is intended to be a humorous and entertaining look at issues and events at the University of Waterloo.  As such articles should not be taken to represent real events or opinions, and they should not be associated with the University of Waterloo staff or administration in any way.  Any similarities to real world events, people or corporations is purely coincidental – or non-coincidental but meant in an entirely joking manner.***

Last Friday, an email was sent from the President’s office at the university announcing that Desire2Learn, also known as D2L or Learn, has been cancelled.

Learn was started just over a year ago, when the university made the decision to make the change away from the UW-ACE system, due to it being too slow and having too many bugs. In the summer, a handful of courses used Learn, and this Fall, about 300 courses at this university. The original plan was to have the entire university switched over to Learn by the Winter 2012 term.

However, in the email from the President, the university has announced that they will not be moving forward with Learn. Three reasons were given for this reinstatement: Firstly, it has been decided that Learn would not be scalable to all courses, especially with the intended growth to 80,000 students by the year 2016. Secondly, it was found to be more buggy and slower than UW-ACE due to inefficient programming resulting in a single page taking as much as 15 seconds to load.

The last reason the email from the President’s office gave for not moving forward with Learn was that there would not be enough funding available to run the program in the coming years. While no specific reason was given for why this was the case, it has been speculated that with the new bill introduced in the House of Commons last month, governments would be decreasing their spending on post-secondary education and closing loop-holes that unevenly gives money to universities through technicalities.

So what were the results from this email over the last few days. Unlike Waterloo Works, Laser Logo, and FedS Hall, where Facebook groups filled with thousands of people, occupy movements around campus, and other forms of violent and non-violent protests, the announcement about the removal of Learn had almost no impact on the student body. It appeared that students had little to no opinion that there was no Desire2Learn.

Faculty members at the university are not surprised by this at all. They have noted that in the past year, since Desire2Learn was announced, they had noticed that the thoughts of students on Desire2Learn was rapidly depleting. One faculty member, who wished to remain anonymous, had commented that it was not expected, as first years at the university had little thoughts on their Desire2Learn, as they have not become familiar with the university lifestyle. On the other side of the spectrum, those in upper years have realized that through many moves the university has done in the past few years, it doesn’t matter that they have no Desire2Learn.

The university is planning to have a Town Hall meeting after the break, to further discuss their plans. In the meantime, weekly updates will be done on UW-ACE to make it better for students until a newer system can be introduced. Hopefully by the next issue of the Tin Soldier, it will be clearer as to what these changes will be. In the meantime, enjoy the lack of Desire2Learn as you go into your final exam.