As first shared at the Jan. 24 Academic Senate meeting, HVCC has chosen to implement D2L Brightspace as our future LMS.
SUNY’s system-wide contract with Blackboard expires on Dec. 21, 2022. SUNY chose Desire2Learn (D2L) Brightspace in Spring 2021 to replace Blackboard and indicated “we anticipate that all campuses will transition to the new digital learning environment.”
Change was inevitable. If the college remained with Blackboard, we would need to migrate to the next version of Blackboard called Blackboard Ultra.
During the Fall 2021 semester, members of the Academic Senate, Instructional Resources Committee, and faculty from various departments compared Blackboard Ultra to D2L Brightspace. Based on faculty feedback, D2L Brightspace was a clear winner. Sample comments included:
- “D2L has MANY features for content authoring that seem to overshadow BB Ultra’s capabilities.”
- “The assignment feature of D2L is excellent. It has several options to choose from, including space for web links, file attachments, and even video messages (as in, I can give the directions via video message and have that appear on the assignment WITH closed captioning!). Plus, the assignment submissions on D2L can be text, audio, or video based. That might be useful for presentation time, as students could simply record themselves directly through D2L.”
- “I love the flexibility and user experience of D2L Brightspace.”
- “D2L has pre-made templates for pages, which you can simply edit and tailor to your own teaching style–very useful for creating pages that engage students!”
- “In Brightspace, students can record and submit their audios and videos in assignments. In BB Ultra, I don’t see this feature. It’s a huge drawback. In language course, audio/video recording tools are crucial.”
- “BB is not intuitive, and I had difficulties figuring out how to organize the content. Brightspace is better organized.”
HVCC has chosen to participate in SUNY’s Cohort 3:
- Spring 2022 — On-campus planning prep (HVCC Campus Implementation Team Formation and formation of sub-committees)
- Fall 2022 — Phase I: Planning and IT/Academic Prep with SUNY (initial training)
- Spring 2023 — Phase II: Pilot – Early Adopter Faculty (includes continued training and aligned with the start of a semester)
- Summer 2023 — Phase III: Production Cutover “Go Live” – All course/faculty (aligned with the start of a semester)
Questions?
Contact Elissa Baker, SUNY DLE Campus Executive Sponsor and Campus Lead, at e.baker@hvcc.edu or (518) 629-8196.
Published: Tue, 25 Jan 2022 13:05:37 +0000 by k.petley