Item: D2L Brightspace
Rating: 1
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use D2L Brightspace to teach online courses. I think in comparison to CANVAS it is very clunky and counter intuitive. Grading an assignment, for instance, requires you to manually open the grade book, find the ungraded assignments one by one, open them as pop ups, and choose the attempt number. I don't understand why there isn't a simple 'to-do' list like in Canvas. Part of the problem might be my institution randomly restricting user abilities to prevent people from messing up their course pages, but I spent hours trying to streamline my page and nothing works well. I will quit my job primarily because I hate working with this platform.

Pros and Cons

Make you click a thing to click a thing to click a thing to get what you are looking for.
Make you click a thing to click a thing to click a thing to get what you are looking for.
Make you click a thing to click a thing to click a thing to get what you are looking for.

Create a to-do list.
Let users customize course page layouts.
Embedded videos take forever to even appear on a page when you get there. This gives me the false impression that content is missing.
I think Gradebook sucks. It has question marks and weird icons all over, but there is no tooltip explaining what they mean.
In my experience, grading is clunky and takes a lot of clicks to get to an assignment.

Most Important Features

Online teaching
Course design
Course delivery
Instructional media hosting

Return on Investment

It will make me quit my job

Alternatives Considered

Canvas, Blackboard Assessment & Accreditation Solution, Blackboard Collaborate and Blackboard Learn by Anthology

In my opinion, D2L Brightspace is inferior to CANVAS and Blackboard. I didn't choose it. It was selected by my employer.

Key Insights

Do you think D2L Brightspace delivers good value for the price?

Are you happy with D2L Brightspace's feature set?

Did D2L Brightspace live up to sales and marketing promises?

Did implementation of D2L Brightspace go as expected?

Would you buy D2L Brightspace again?

Other Software Used

Canvas, Python IDLE, Microsoft 365, Adobe Premiere Pro, Microsoft Powerpoint

Likelihood to Recommend

In my opinion, it is not well-suited for teaching online courses. The design is clunky and outdated. It opens pop-ups for a lot of things that don't need pop-ups. It has unexplained icons (e.g., a question mark in a rectangle) with no tooltips.

I think it may be well-suited for wasting your time and graying out your hair.

I think it's a clunky platform that feels like it is was made in 2003.

Overall Satisfaction with D2L Brightspace