Week 6 Evaluation:

Behind the Scenes Evaluation

IDL-7140

lms evaluation Introduction

Hello, Members of the Board,

I am here today to share the findings from this week's evaluation of D2L Brightspace and Google Classroom. The evaluation will look at the "Behind the Scenes" information that is not easily found on the LMS product page. It is important to have strong support, a strong parent company, and good customer evaluations. Also, the company should have a secure financial background and future. I will look at the availability of training materials and their cost.

The five areas I will cover are as follows:

Customer Satisfaction Level
Training
Technical Support
Costs
Analytic Data Provided from LMS

d2l lms evaluation

Customer Satisfaction Level

Customer quote, "It is similar to other Learning Management Systems that I have used, so it was easy to navigate. I really like that you can find some information in multiple spots."

Flexible learning division-student-focused (online).

Faculty LMS usage went from 26% in the 2016-2017 school year to 83% in 2020-2021 (pandemic).

The Institution customizes D2L resources, training, and orientation for students, staff, and faculty.

D2L account manager customer service response is not as robust, the Institution has staff interface with students LMS needs.

Support

The Good

Dedicated tech account manager

An online community to share information with other customers

Not so Good

Information regarding alternatives for solving problems

Continuous delivery of updates creates problems

Account manager follow-up

Training

In-house by the institution
D2L has a lot of training available
The Institution decided to create development for the Center for Teaching and Learning
More than just the "nuts and bolts."

Function Who

Contract facilitation IT w/support from eLearning

System support from LMS IT

Build & Maintenance eLearning

of Instructional Environment

Instructional Support eLearning

40 Staff and 4 teams control the content development of

Distance Learning.

The 4 teams are:

Instructional Designers
Learning Technology (support faculty, emerging technology, & drop-in demand).
Flexible Learning-student-focused (online students, competency-based education, & prior learning assessment).
Innovation lab (seed ideas to scale).

Technical Support

The Institution transferred everything to Cloud migration.

Add on considerations:

Same uptime, performance level
The same level of data access-hourly
Disaster Recovery Bronze
2018-contract signing and building environment
Text server 8/10/2018
SIS Integration
Holding Tank-Data Sweeper
Moving to API in 2022
The Institution provides Just in Time (JIT) training for its faculty and students.

Costs

Software-$159, 476.64

Support-$57, 089.52

Total- $216, 566.16

Fulltime equivalent 12,000-13,000 scaffolded price based on FTE

Analytic Data Provided from LMS

D2L makes use of "Holding Tank" (data sweeper) to load data. The Institution is moving to API in 2022.
A "data hub' allows downloading of data to the data warehouse.
The Institution has its own data house.

Google classroom Lms evaluation

Customer Satisfaction Level

Q. What are the customer perceptions of Google Classroom (teachers, admin, staff)?

A. A Google Classroom expert says, "Our district has adopted Google Classroom as our go-to-system for communication for students particularly with the adjustments we have had to make with online learning this year. Up to the beginning of this school year, teachers were able to use Google Classroom, but it was not mandated. With COVID, we had to adjust and this year every teacher was required to use it. It has become a one-stop-shop for not only teachers but also for administration to use."

Q. Has Google Classroom been reliable for your community?

A. Google Classroom has become very reliable for our community in a variety of ways. It has allowed us to use one delivery method that every student uses. In the past, we have had multiple programs running and it has been difficult for students and parents to adjust to. After realizing this, we made the decision to use Google Classroom as our primary access for teachers and students. It has cut down on issues with fidelity and also with communication with families.

Q. How often do you receive company follow-up?

A. "We do not receive company follow-up from Google as we might with other companies. We do have a partner within Google that we work with, but we are not in constant communication with them as a district."

Training

Q. When your district purchased the license for Google for Education. did you receive the following:

Training materials
Training sessions
Online help

A. "When our district went one-to-one with Chromebooks which included Google for Education, we set up a pilot program the year prior to work through many of the obstacles that we knew we would face. At that time, we were not as familiar with Google for Education as we are now. We first sent a team out to be trained in many areas of Google. This team served as the train-the-trainers for the district for a number of years. We set up a lot of training both during school and during the summer to prepare teachers and staff for what was coming. To say that it was an easy transition would not be accurate, but it has worked out to be a positive one. We are now in our 6th year of being a Google district and the amount of training we have had is a large part of why it has been so successful. We have started training teachers that are interested in being Google Certified as a way of using those teachers as trainers as well. We have the Google online portal that does have any training you want. We often refer teachers to that when we do not have any sessions ready and available. However, we do continue to train each year on Google Apps. We send teams out to conferences as well to continue to find new innovations within Google to bring back to our district."

Technical Support

Q. Was there a migration from a different LMS?

A. "Prior to Google, the district did not have an LMS in place so there was no migration."

Costs

Learning Management System (LMS)?

"The only cost that we had to pay was the fee to create a domain for the district." $4.00/user/month for faculty and staff and $4.00/user/month for students. (Google Cloud).
Training?

"The cost for this is hard to explain or even put into numbers because we are constantly training. Most of our costs would be from the presenters, conferences, etc. We have spent a good amount of money on training to make sure that our district has what it needs, but the number is difficult to obtain."

Integration?

"Just the licensing fee that is associated with using Google for Education."

Analytic Data Provided from LMS

Q. How much data can you harvest from the LMS?

A. "The data depends on what information you are looking for. We have all of our Chromebooks integrated into Google and also Clever and GoGuardian."

Q. What type of analytics does Google provide?

A. Analytics are found only in Google Workspace Education Plus, formerly called G Suite Enterprise. BigQuery is a cloud-based data analytics service that allows you to interact and manage large data sets. (YouTube, Big Changes to Google for Education).

Q. Is there an additional cost to view data?

A. Yes, $5.00/student/year2

Recommendation

Hello Board, this week I evaluated the "Behind the Scenes" of D2L Brightspace and Google Classroom. Both systems received overall great customer service reviews. It is important to note that the D2L LMS is highly regarded at the university level and Google Classroom is very popular and becoming the "Gold Standard" in K12. I wasn't able to obtain much information about the data analytics for Google Classroom from either the interview or online. The D2L evaluation package from The Institution appears to be a winner (there were 0 service disruption demands on the capacity during the pandemic)! The capacity went from 700- course sections to over 3000 sections! I would say that both systems have met the needs of the interviewed institutions and both institutions customize their LMS and distance learning to fit their needs.

This week I recommend D2L Brightspace because I was able to obtain more in-depth information. It is hard to compare apples to oranges, but, the account manager piece for D2L is compelling.

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