Brightspace

Robust -- Brightspace can be as simple or as complex as you'd like. There are so many different configurations you can set up when implementing the product.

Intuitive for students -- Especially for learners, Brightspace is very simple to use and doesn't take much training for students to jump in and get started.

Dependable -- Brightspace (at least so far) has been very dependable for our users. In our multiple years of using the product, it has only gone down for a very minimal time.

The grade book can be very challenging to set up for instructors.

The current method of implementing learning outcomes is tedious. Although, this is being worked on.

Provide an online platform for education/training.

Serve as a institution-wide communication channel.

Allow for customization to institutional needs.

Consistency across the platform.

May take time to customize to best fit institutional needs.

The layout is amazing! Students who have used other LMS's have often commented on the ease of navigability Brightspace offers.

The annotation features for course assignments are easy to follow.

The layout of the homepage is very user-friendly and places focus on course announcements.

Brightspace email is also a bonus feature!

I wish there was a way that we could block students from their courses and provide notification as to why they have been locked out of their accounts.

I wish there was a way to change the order of pinned course in the my courses widget.

The instant messenger features in Brightspace are not really that great. I wish there was a way to link it to your phone or that it would provide a different alert. It currently works pretty similar to email.

Creating and organizing assignments

Able to upload files of all types

Manage calendar

Student reminders of work due via built in calendar

Editing assignments: too many steps, can be more streamlined

Courses are presented the same for instructors and learners. Instructors have to use 'student view' to see course from learners' point of view. Must click a button to deactivate

Using the built in course management system to create modules can be challenging

Allowing users to embed content links from YouTube or Google Drive enables learners to experience a richer lesson.

Providing a powerful editor that allows developers to also include content from Adobe Stock as well as textbook publishers and cloud storage companies gives more power and creative ability to instructors.

Providing scaling for mobile and traditional computer systems ensures students will not have issues on the go.

The customization of home pages and groups enable courses to be used for small training sessions with breakout groups, large courses with separate sections, and even just more engaging courses that present themed icons and logos.

The user interface for students is clunky, and it can be difficult to access courses once several have been registered, let alone once a student is inside of a course and has to navigate the content pages.

The instructor's interface is also difficult as courses are presented in the same fashion as they are for learners which means instructors who have taught many courses will need to dig through lists in order to find their current courses. The tools to add content to a course or design a course's appearance, while powerful, are confusing and should at least be supplemented with a detailed help guide and video series.

Gradebooks work for traditional courses; however, in gradeless or workshop settings, they are difficult to use. I have used text-based grades in lieu of numerical options, but I would still like to be able to revise or implement numerical grades in the final grade column as well. This is important for systems that do not use grades but are contract-based as the text fields may say "A" or "C", but the final numerical value may still be 0.

Certain content elements are missing from the platform, such as the ability to easily delete several items in a batch, or the ability to show and hide large and small elements at the click of a button without diving into menus. When one reuses a course, there is a high level of time involved in showing only the key elements and deleting unnecessary content which could be simplified.

File sharing capability between users is largely unparalleled in the LMS space (from my experience).

The user interface has continued to receive valuable updates that have created an incredibly efficient platform to navigate.

Brightspace offers a single source of truth for standardized learning outcomes based on company objectives.

One can feel a bit rushed on the Brightspace platform during the log-out period. Security requirements may require this, but it makes end-users more conscious about getting through content than taking notes.

From my experience, there is not a direct connection between the platform and Outlook.

Some content on the platform can feel redundant.

I love that Brightspace is easy to use. Everything is pretty self-explanatory.

Although I am not in the IT department, it seems like they are able to customize Brightspace quite a bit to meet the school's and instructors' needs.

The only con that I can think of right now is that Brightspace does not integrate with our SIS. However, I believe this is an issue with our SIS. I have been told that it can be done, but we are still looking into making that happen.

Brightspace makes inclusion of TAs, assistants, observers, etc. a breeze.

The export feature makes it very easy to share materials with other instructors or plan your class for the next semester.

Automatic grading of quizzes is a huge help when appropriate.

Brightspace has done a great job providing resources to help students avoid academic integrity issues (and help instructors detect and address it).

Although it's hard to figure out how to do it at first, the interface for each class is very customizable.

Although it's improved a lot over the years, it is NOT intuitive to use for instructors or students.

The documentation is just incredibly scant. Although our university offers some support, it would be nice to be able to get help without having to call our IT department.

Unless you customize the interface (which is a bit tricky to figure out), it can be pretty cluttered and overwhelming for students.

It's very organized. From the moment you open it, you can see your courses taking up the majority of your screen. But you also have alerts for messages at the top, so that keeps you up-to-date on what you need to know right away, instead of digging through each course.

It's very clear and easy to find what you're looking for.

It's a great way to add content to a class, even if it is already a face-to-face course. You can use it to communicate with students, to allow them to see their grades as the semester is going on, or to give them supplemental information.

If there was a way they could integrate the student's/professor's campus emails, that would be fantastic.

I could see a video chat feature to be helpful, especially for online students.

That's all I can think of for now, it's really pretty comprehensive and simple to use.

The grade book is very customizable. There is a learning curve, as there always is if something is flexible, but there are a lot of good options available for grading, displaying grades, and calculation of grades.

Adding course content of many types can easily be done using drag & drop or copy-paste. It is easy to retain stored content from semester to semester. Updating an item takes three clicks. It is easy to organize and reorganize content and allows sub-sections. It records whether individual students have opened material and how much time they spent using an item.

I like the flexibility of organizing the dropbox for student submissions. Deadlines in the dropbox or discussions automatically appear in the course calendar.

I like the range of quiz question options, in particular, the "multi-select" question type.

D2L should find a way to allow markup of student writing directly in the review panel of the dropbox. Blackboard and Canvas do this.

When you set the number of points an item is worth in the dropbox, it doesn't carry this value over into the grade book automatically, which means you have to be careful to enter the same information in two different interfaces.

The rubric function needs a wider range of options. It should be possible to upload rubrics from external files and make them usable within D2L.

The discussions are hard to reorganize. Grading discussions using a rubric is not possible inside D2L, as far as I know.

When using the Record audio function to provide student feedback, the audio quality is too poor to be used in many situations.

It used to do well with grading.

It used to do well with file upload.

It used to do well with file download.

The attendance and feedback are ok.

They should go back to their previous server.

They should actually admit that they made a bad move and try to fix the issues.

Their tech support should stop blaming the user.

Extremely versatile; because we have a very diverse faculty, each with a particular work-flow, D2L is flexible enough to meet the needs of everyone.

The iPad grading application is a godsend! I can grade offline, and the second it's linked with WiFi it will upload the grades. Since I'm an English professor, this is incredibly useful.

The ability to copy elements from one shell to another is helpful when you have multiple sections of the same class.

The versatility is also its drawback. There are SO many different ways to do the same thing, that learning the system is overwhelming.

Creating quizzes is not user friendly at all. It takes an inordinate amount of time.

The shell itself is not customizable. It's difficult to draw student's attention because it is not at all visually appealing.

Promote content creation and improve teaching and learning resources

Deliver web-enhanced, blended and online courses through a highly reliable environment

Offers a consistent experience and helps drive student success amongst a variety of students

Quiz tool within D2L is lacking, so MnSCU annually funds the use of Respondus 4.0 Quiz with a D2L personality built-in

I love the Dropbox feature, it's very easy to associate a grade from the Dropbox feature to the Gradebook which the student will receive immediately. In addition, the Feedback area is clear to the student and easy to use for me, as faculty - I have a larger window where I can see the assignment and type feedback while the assignment is in front of me.

The Gradebook is easy to use and to set up. My students love that I can give them a total grade after each due date because I can set up a 'Grade to Date' Setting which includes only assignments that have been due.

It's integrated into our student portal which allows students to have a single sign-in to their course shells from their student portal page.

We use a hosted solution, and at times it feels 'slow' - I know that's not specific, but I do know that it isn't just on our network, but on my home network which has a fast internet connection. When I'm trying to go between student grades for instance, it will often time out as I click from one name, look at their grades, then click on the next arrow.

Building quizzes to come up with random items from a specific block of questions can be difficult - that may be an integration issue with certain publishers.

Once a rubric is built, it's extremely difficult to edit it - you have to start over again.

I HATE the internal email system - it will forward emails to my .edu email, but I can't reply to them until I'm in Desire2Learn because it's all internal to Desire2Learn.

Date release options for activities, details, and content groupings allow you to plan a dynamic learning sequence.

Great flexibility for displaying media. It's very easy to build attractive and engaging lessons using all of Desire2Learn's media tools.

I tried to use a grading rubric for my discussions, and it created a separate grading method. Discussion rubric grading could vastly improve the tool.

Can we get the option to grade the discussions using the iPad app "GRADER"?

Can we get the option to grade quizzes and provide feedback using "GRADER"? Feedback options seemed to be missing from my GRADER.

Class content, email, discussion forums and basic structure.

Easy navigation between the various sections of a course.

Faculty can easily build a new course within a course shell.

Email is confusing to use for some students, especially when trying to look up email addresses and place them in the 'To' field.

The various settings for the discussion forum for Threaded view versus other views can be confusing for some.

Desire2Learn is a fairly simple LMS and is easy for end users, both faculty and students, to learn how to navigate. It is, to all intents and purposes, a file sharing system that relies heavily on drop down menus for navigation. Therefore, it's easy to teach faculty and students how to utilize both in person and remotely. I have had occasion to help students learn to use the product remotely and it's not particularly difficult.

Our current version of Desire2Learn has a simplified grading interface included which improves our ability to access all the content that users have submitted related to a given exercise. The content is also integrated into the gradebook so that we do not have to toggle back and forth between the exercises and the gradebook in order to assess our students' work.

The available analytics are quite useful for monitoring student engagement and keeping tabs on student progress. It is easy to tell which students are struggling to get started in a course. It would be lovely to include a feature which allows you to automate reports of that nature.

Desire2Learn is overly reliant on drop down menus so it can be very clunky to navigate in, particularly on mobile devices.

It is exceptionally difficult to use the e-mail system on a touch screen device. I cannot count the number of times that I have lost an entire drafted e-mail because the program froze up after a cursor was put in the wrong part of an e-mail window. It's essentially a huge exercise in frustration unless you're composing it with a keyboard.

Certain features such as adding rubrics are also more laborious than they should be. They require you to select features from a series of menus instead of simply being able to upload a finished rubric to the system.

One of the features that I believe Desire2Learn does better than some of the other LMS's on the market is the Gradebook. The Gradebook offers the ability to create categories which allow an instructor to easily drop the lowest x number of grades.

Depending on how your particular course is set up, the news tool can work as a great place to send announcements to students. The ability to embed your own personalized YouTube video in this are can also be extremely helpful to students.

I have a bit of a love hate relationship with the email tool. I am not necessarily a fan of the interface when adding recipients etc., however it does have some positives as well. Communication with students can get very overwhelming if you are using an outside the LMS email tool. I prefer to keep all course communication inside each class. Things like grade appeals are much easier to deal with when you have easy access to the Desire2Learn archived emails.

One of the main things that seams to be a common source of irritation is the inconsistencies found throughout Brightspace. For instance, there are two main areas used to build a course, the Course Builder and the Content area. It appears that these two areas were created by different teams of technicians that did not communicate.

Although we have been told that this issue will be fixed when we upgrade and I understand that this is not an easy problem to solve, the document reader not functioning has been the cause of a lot of support calls.

Quizzes and the Question Library are a source of major annoyance to faculty and support staff. The issue is that the two areas are not connected as they should be. For instance, it is very possible to have questions inside of a quiz that are not in the question library. They should be connected. If a question is in any quiz it should also be in the Question Library. That is not the case.

The rubric tool is another area that I have a love, hate relationship with. The tool can be very useful when used correctly, however it does not work as it should when using it with the discussion tool. The real issue is the students ability and ease when trying to view the completed rubric.

It is also not helpful that rubrics can be associated with a tool (i.e. dropbox) as well as the Gradebook item. Desire2Learn does not seem to tie the two together even though the tool and the Gradebook item are associated.

Tests are easy to set up and administer, as well as easily allowing student exemptions.

Uploading files into the system is very simple.

Presenting material in different modules, including links and discussions about a certain topic, allows easy changes after setup.

Discussion boards are hard to read in the current format--the "threads" don't appear as easily as in some other platforms, and so it makes it difficult to follow what has been written.

The internal e-mail feature has a very small file attachment size, which limits its functionality for sending materials.

Grade book works very well, for keeping track of student's assignments, grades, etc. Provided a way to eliminate a paper grade book.

Works well for providing additional materials to students for courses. Much easier to use than Blackboard.

Ability to include recorded videos for substitute lectures for classes

Setting up groups/group areas was difficult. Compared to Blackboard it is much more time intensive to complete.

Easier customization of page layouts, graphics, etc.

Online quizzing works very well and dumps automatically into the gradebook, which can then be exported to the university Registrar. Automatic grading is a plus.

Surveys are good in that we use them to evaluate each course and faculty member who teaches in the course. Export of the data is fast and easy and gives a good overview of the data collected.

Gradebook can be set up to mimic what faculty members have included in their syllabi regarding how they are calculating grades. Using percentages, weights, and custom formulas is a nice feature.

D2L can be more compatible with browsers. We have had issues with Chrome and Internet Explorer. Typically in the drag-and-drop these browsers either do not work or work intermittently.

Speed is always a problem with D2L. Depending on the number of people across the university using the program at any given time, it could cause issues with response to clicks.

After the most recent upgrade it apparent that D2L is built as a multiple-programmer program in that navigation is not always the same going from module to module.

I find that D2L has a user friendly interface and can be navigated by most instructors and students without too much problem.

D2L integrates well with other tools, such as e-texts, and most softwares such as Respondus.

D2L is easy for the help desk people to navigate, making it easy to provide good customer service for the people who do need help.

D2L has some issues with some of its tools that take a while to correct. There have been some problems with feedback for submissions recently.

There are a few things I would like to see added such as the ability to import rubrics from Excel and the ability to print the grade book.

A functionality that I feel needs work is the Equation editor. I find it difficult to use the editor for some functions such as logic formulas.

Test and Quizzes - allows a full array of questions types and options, randomization of both questions and answers, selective release, etc.

Uploading and sharing of documents and course resources. Faculty had little trouble getting material into the system. Students found the interface intuitive and easy to use.

Ease of administrative management. System administration allowed for customization, user management, and other important functionality.

Better integration with 3rd party applications. At the time I used the system, there were some limitations on external products integrating well into the system. Perhaps that has already improved.

Better mobile interface. Some students commented they found it difficult to navigate on mobile devices.

More customization by role. Sometimes users did not fit into the pre-determined roles - i.e. instructor, student, etc.

D2L provides a relatively easy way to create customize course pages. This is helpful as I design custom online courses and can create my own templates.

The assessment data is helpful in the quiz area. Faculty members are able to see data for the test as a whole, individual questions, and individual answers. This allows us to make decisions on curriculum and assessment as we review/revise courses.

The notification system is helpful for students. Students can subscribe to notifications through the news and receive updates via email or text. They can also subscribe to discussion boards/posts, get notifications via text/email about deadlines, grades, etc... A nice way to stay connected without having to constantly login to the LMS and "check" to see if something is new.

I would like the ability to pull all discussion posts for a single user in a class for assessment purposes but this feature appears to have been removed in the recent upgrade to 10.2

The WYSIWYG editor is a little messy at times so I often work on the code by hand or in a program like Dreamweaver then copy the code to D2L. This adds time to my work and makes it difficult for faculty to work independently.

The new user interface in the Discussion Board area has been a problem for students. It is not as easy to review/read/follow discussion threads as it was in the previous version.

It has become more difficult to delete discussion forums and modules in 10.2 - there was a way in previous versions to bulk edit and remove discussions/modules that you were no longer using on one page. You now have to remove one at a time. This is a time consuming process.

The user interface design is not at all consistent from tool to tool. It appears that several different design/development teams worked independently. This makes it difficult for the tool to become "intuitive" to faculty users.

The rubric tool is a bit rigid and does not allow for a high level of customization (ranges of points and in-line custom comments for students are my biggest complaints)

Easily organize and structure course content with objectives to make student learning progress accessible

Multilingual support to help international students navigate the system

Easily manage students by setting up intakes and bulk enrolling into courses

Great course planning tool that easily organized courses by visually mapping our programs

The system was not always stable and available to students, this was largely due to country firewalls that prevented speed and accessibility

Language packs were useful, but came at a high price and needed to be continually updated locally

Student records and data had to be exported and analyzed outside of the system