In Spring 2013, Eastern will make the full and complete switch from WebCT to Desire2Learn, a program that has been in the experimental stages this past semester.

Brian Murphy, the director of technological support and campus technology for Information Technology Services, said Desire2Learn was partially implemented this semester to begin showing students and faculty what it would be like in the spring.

“Most of the groundwork (for making the switch) has been done,” he said. “The last phase of implementation as far as ITS is concerned is to make sure that we have the interface from Banner flowing back and forth in real time to D2L.”

Murphy said it is currently being tested and will be set to go for the start of the semester in January.

He said an email recently went out to all faculty telling them they need to remove all their information from WebCT so that it can be transferred to D2L in the spring.

“Anything they want to keep for historical purposes should be taken out of WebCT,” he said. “Their course sections and a lot of that content has already been migrated, but grade information and details about assignments is not being moved from one platform to the other.”

Murphy said faculty will have to move that information manually because the two platforms do not have a mechanism to transfer it automatically when the switch is made.

“Other than all online coursework being on D2L, not much will be different,” he said. “Eastern, because of the timing on our contract, is on the most current version of D2L.”

Murphy said the switch was made from WebCT to D2L at the time of a contract upgrade because the faculty wanted some additional functionality from the site.

“We knew it wasn’t necessarily all going to be in Blackboard 9 (the next generation of WebCT), and this was a good time to look at other products and options,” Murphy said. “A number of other schools had gone with D2L, and we heard positive feedback from them.”

Murphy said the look and feel of the online interfaces will be much the same from WebCT to D2L, but some of the tools may be in different part of the system.

“Some of the work will probably just be getting started in the spring for those in the Center for Academic Technology Support because all the faculty will be transitioning over,” Murphy said.

Julie Lockett, the director of instructional technology and training services for the Center for Academic Technology Support, said CATS has been doing a lot of training sessions for both faculty and students during the course of the Fall 2012 semester.

“The only thing not connected between WebCT and D2L right now is the Banner system, which includes PAWS and the grading system,” she said. “Faculty are not able to submit their final grades through D2L this semester.”

Lockett said the overall feedback CATS has gotten on D2L’s trial run this semester has been positive.

“With any new system, we knew it was going to be different, and it would have been like that if we had stayed with WebCT, too,” she said. “Change is a good thing because we have a lot more features that we didn’t have before.”

Robyn Dexter can be reached at 581-2812 or redexter@eiu.edu.