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About Carmen

Carmen is Ohio State University's online learning management system, which is used by instructors, staff, and TAs to create and share materials.

Carmen automatically creates a blank course shell, complete with a class roster and a set of course tools, for every course in the Registrar's Master Schedule. Instructors choose if and when to activate them for student access.

Carmen space is also available upon request for other University purposes, including hosting discussions or content for committees, research teams, or departments.

Carmen Infrastructure

The Carmen team includes eLearning and user support consultants, systems and application developers, and visual and information designers from TELR. The Carmen team partners with the Office of Information Technology (OIT) to support the operation of Carmen, including system maintenance and technical support services.

The Carmen system receives course enrollment data from the Registrar's system in a daily data feed and, during grade submission windows, can be used to transfer student grades to the Registrar's system, from which they must be officially approved.

The system behind Carmen is provided by Desire2Learn (D2L). Ohio State selected the D2L platform as the result of a structured evaluation process that began in Fall 2002. After a pilot during spring quarter 2005, Carmen was made available for all of Ohio State's courses. The history of the section process and product evaluation is outlined in the Selection Process Archive section.

Why the Name "Carmen"?

"Carmen" is a reference to the alma mater “Carmen, Ohio.” We chose to brand our learning management system in a way meaningful to the Ohio State community because online learning environments are an extension of campus life and face-to-face classrooms.