Desire 2 Learn (D2L) is one of the many course management platforms available. I have experience using Blackboard and WebCT as a student back at Purdue and I'd say D2L is far easier to use. As an instructor, D2L provides fantastic flexibility to build either an online course or a repository for an in-person course. I have a ton of background experience building courses in D2L for online courses as I helped Ladd Keith launch the SBE Online program and build out some of our earlier courses. So I spent plenty of time editing HTML learning how to link pages internally in D2L, building in VoiceTheads, Panapto to stream movies (although this ended over the summer), discussion groups and more. D2L was tricky to get to work (thankfully it is much easier now) in the way we wanted, but we ended up getting our SBE 201 course through the online course review with a 98% (if I remember correctly).
It is incredibly time intensive to go through and set up an entire course as we have done in SBE. In fact, I couldn't imagine doing it on my own on top of other work responsibilities. Luckily, our department hired an instructional designer to build out the other courses as well as update/refresh the other ones. This helped give our program a unified appearance across all courses. It also gives me, and other instructors, the ability to just focus on updating content, release dates, discussion questions, quizzes...the meat of the course...and leave the overall design alone. Don't get me wrong, it's still time intensive to update all of the content, but I'm so glad to not have to focus on the design aspects as well.
With that in mind, I think the best way to organize a course site is by Modules and Lessons. For example:
Module 1 for my PLG 301- Regional Planning course is: Overview and Climate Change
Lesson 1: What is planning?
-Text lesson with embedded videos, links, and photos
-VoiceThread that is an overview of the lesson with powerpoint captured
-linked readings or uploaded PDF files of readings
-Discussion post on the topic
Lesson 2: Climate Change
--see above
Lesson 3: Movie that summarizes the themes discussed in lesson 1 and 2
--just a discussion post on this
Quiz 1 that covers lesson 1-3
I think by nesting things together, it keeps everything focused by topic area and makes it easier for students to find the lesson and associated materials. I try to vary the lessons by having multiple types of content (video, text, outside resources, etc.) as well as multiple ways to engage in the course. Is it perfect? Nope. But I find it works well for this type of course.
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