When John Baker was a third-year student at the University of Waterloo, he found himself musing on this not-at-all-grandiose question: “What’s the key problem that I could solve that would have the biggest impact on the world?” As an engineering student in 1999, Baker needed only look around his classroom for an answer. Assignments were still printed and delivered by hand; professors used markers and acetate slides for their lectures; cellphones were absolutely not allowed in class.
When they merged these capabilities in a single software model, D2L found themselves with a widely applicable and marketable product suited to any number of classrooms or workplaces. “Eventually we brought the platform to market, and then word of mouth led us to selling [it] globally,” says Auger. In 2006, a lengthy legal patent battle with U.S.-based competitor Blackboard stalled progress; both sides eventually settled and Desire2Learn rebranded as D2L.
Sometimes this is easier than other times, naturally. When D2L moved further into elementary schools, they scooped up Cheryl Ainoa from Yahoo to join the team as COO. Ainoa’s husband is a teacher and she has two young kids at home, so she’d seen how slow schools were to get on board with changing times. “Even though my kids were in a really good school, education in general hadn’t adopted technology in a way that actually leverages it to do things better.
For post-secondary students, ample analytics can deliver hard stats on any facet of education. “For example, we can identify risk factors for underperformance or dropping the course far in advance. We can flag these factors for instructors and intervene earlier,” says Auger. Working with corporations, meanwhile, D2L can use online learning to retrain workers in an economy where jobs are increasingly lost to automation and AI.
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