Task Force Faculty Survey: Report on Features

The open-ended questions on the survey elicited many comments from faculty about features that they found lacking or inadequate in the current course management system.

Please note that this is not a complete features list for these software packages. Instead, this is a list of features spontaneously mentioned by OU faculty in response to the Task Force survey.

Here is a summary of the most mentioned features:

	BLACKBOARD 6	DESIRE2LEARN
MANAGEMENT
Easy to add/delete students/instructors
Limited guest access by area
Options for assigning students to groups
INTERFACE
Customize look/feel of interface
Create and navigation name buttons
Create internal navigation links
Eliminate redundant OK screens
ANNOUNCEMENTS
Arrange order of announcements
HTML editor
Spellchecker
EMAIL
Email attachments
To: Cc: and BCc: options
Spellchecker
CONTENT
Streamline uploading content
Allow FTP/WebDAV uploading
Allow drag-and-drop uploading
Rearrange content
Flexible student view of content
Equation Editor
HTML editor
Spellchecker
Flexible course-to-course copy
DROPBOX
Streamline dropbox submissions
Create folders in dropbox
Mass download from dropbox
ASSESSMENT
Wider range of quiz questions
Wider range of survey questions
Better survey data reporting
Questions with calculated values
Easier assessment creation
Partial credit
Right minus wrong credit
Differential feedback
Modify existing assessment
Log of all student quiz attempts
Equation Editor
HTML editor
Spellchecker
GRADEBOOK
Upload/download entire gradebook
Grade weighting
Drop lowest grade
Flexible gradebook categories
Gradebook comments
Non-numeric items (attendance)
Convert numeric to letter grade
Log all changes to gradebook
DISCUSSION BOARD
Threaded or non-threaded
Statistics for student activity
HTML editor
Spellchecker
CHAT
Chat for Mac
Instant Messaging