D2L (shorthand for Desire 2 Learn and now known as Brightspace) is the worst thing ever made by a human. Created to increase the demands and work students have to do to higher levels now possible with the latest technology, it allows students to instantly receive grades and hand in/manage assignments given and received. In an increasingly digital world, the best thing someone needs to do is to make the assignments, PowerPoints and other various gobbledy gook on a magical internet portal that is impossible to navigate, and makes you break down trying to use it for anything. Of course, there is the stress of instantly receiving a grade that might be a bomb, but I can’t relate to that. I didn’t even care back when I was doing great. Let’s break down how much it sucks.
Trying to find stuff that you want, or would be useful for you on the internet is very hard, that’s why Google made billions, and why Yahoo! failed, and why Google is still making billions. It’s the last thing stopping people from sending out emails on where the information is. Like how I’m this close to sending an email to the Canadian Ministry of Transportation just to see if they have that car safety video in the back, or something. Searching things easily on the internet is the best thing since the internet.
Though to be fair, the teachers give it a hard time too, one of the PowerPoints that I need to follow his lecture is hidden inside a checklist that’s hidden behind three sub-folders. So I don’t even know where to even look anymore. Even looking where you know it should be doesn’t work. In fact, I’m typing this while I’m in class because I gave up after downloading three wrong PowerPoints. They’d just put this stuff just about anywhere! Some put it in the content tab, in assesments > assignments, inside checklists inside the content tab, with a checklist being the same thing as a sub-folder but it’s treated as a file…
yikes.
You know what? They should just give you a big button that downloads literally everything in the course, I’ll search that garbage on the computer myself. Just use some quick commands to move files, boom, done. Maybe I should’ve downloaded what I needed before class… If it makes you feel better, I was thinking about something else for five seconds, at which you might as well just leave the room at this point, because nothing is going to make any sense after crossing the point of no return. I couldn’t search for the file either because that search bar is garbage, I don’t think it even reads the data inside the files which makes searching suck even more. I don’t even think it works!
I hate scrolling, and you would agree since we all scroll on our phones with no purpose, much like a cow that eats grass all day because it doesn’t know what’s coming to ‘em. Every element in this site has to be HUGE so you have to scroll just to see more than two posts in that content directory. You’re scrolling when you check the same spot for the 5th time, you’re scrolling back up just to check the files inside the 20th sub-folder, you scroll down just to check the 21st sub-folder. Let’s add more confusing drop-downs so nobody knows what the heck is going on. There’s things I’ve never heard about until I get that notification saying it’s due in three days. My teacher gave me an F grade on a self assessment assignment literally one month after it was due, which I’ve only heard about just then. To be fair, it was part of an assignment that she decided NOT TO BE SUBMITTED WITH THE REST OF OUR WORK! So you know, gross incompetence was at play here. Still would’ve been nice if D2L was able to tell me that it was due. Was there a due date written on D2L? Who cares.
There are students that are already breaking themselves apart for almost no reason, let’s save their eyes and give the people a dark theme. At least you can see those greys on a dark theme.
A lot of links and text manage to clog my eyeballs. A lot of things in D2L are useless information (well it’s school so what was I expecting) compared to the mass amount of valuable things out there. Then you meet people that have a chance to learn something interesting on Wikipedia and you find out there’s grown ass men out here that don’t even know about Genghis Khan. A grown-ass man, in 2019, who doesn’t know who the fuck Genghis Khan is, ladies and gentlemen. He is also proud of his ignorance of basic history. I deliberately did NOT include a link here because I assume everyone else that matters knows who he is. There’s four links (parts) that actually matter on here, Assignments, tests, grades and content. That’s it. I mean there isn’t even that much text or links on the screen but it somehow bombards minds, and you’re staring at the same thing for a minute or two just trying to process what you just did.