UK's U Surrey Chooses Desire2Learn

After two years of consideration, a major British university will soon shift off of its current learning management system and onto Desire2Learn's Learning Suite. Surrey University, which has nearly 18,000 students, has signed a six-year agreement with the UK division of the LMS company. Implementation begins this month, and the system is expected to go live in August 2012 for the subsequent academic year.

A major driver for the selection was Surrey's desire to provide a more personalized learning environment to students, to allow them to collaborate more easily, and to enable them to work on both computers and mobile devices. The current "virtual learning environment," as the university refers to it, suffered from periods of unreliable service, which undermined staff confidence in it and dampened its use by faculty. U Surrey is hoping for greater pickup among faculty with the shift to the newer LMS platform.

"This is an exciting innovation for the students and the university to let everyone use the latest technology to further their studies and enjoyment of learning," said Vice Chancellor Christopher Snowden. "The system enables us to enhance the teaching and learning process and provides us the flexibility to allow students to learn in personalized ways."

In August the company released an update to Learning Suite that adds improvements in the areas of assessment, grading, and social networking.

About the Author

Dian Schaffhauser is a former senior contributing editor for 1105 Media's education publications THE Journal, Campus Technology and Spaces4Learning.

Featured

  • SXSW EDU

    Explore the Future of AI in Higher Ed at SXSW EDU 2025

    This March 3-6 in Austin, TX, the SXSW EDU Conference & Festival celebrates its 15th year of exploring education's most critical issues and providing a forum for creativity, innovation, and expression.

  • man working on laptop outdoors

    Digital Leadership Must-Haves for 2025: A CDO's Picks

    Now that he's more than a year and a half into his chief digital officer role at NJIT, we've asked Ed Wozencroft to reflect on his areas of concentration: What work must digital leaders "own" in 2025?

  • From Fire TV to Signage Stick: University of Utah's Digital Signage Evolution

    Jake Sorensen, who oversees sponsorship and advertising and Student Media in Auxiliary Business Development at the University of Utah, has navigated the digital signage landscape for nearly 15 years. He was managing hundreds of devices on campus that were incompatible with digital signage requirements and needed a solution that was reliable and lowered labor costs. The Amazon Signage Stick, specifically engineered for digital signage applications, gave him the stability and design functionality the University of Utah needed, along with the assurance of long-term support.

  • digital artwork of glowing, interconnected neural-like shapes on a gradient background of deep blue and vibrant purple

    Google Announces Upgrade to Flagship Gemini AI Platform, Enhancing Multimodal Capabilities

    Google has launched Gemini 2.0, designed to empower enterprise users and developers with advanced multimodal capabilities and enhanced performance.