Brightspace

Hands down the best learning software to date

Comments: My other experience with this software it has made me love to learn again maybe love school again it’s so easy to use. It’s so user-friendly I can’t say that enough it is hands-down, the best learning software there is.

Pros:

Everything about this software is super user-friendly they think about the student when they made this it’s not hard to years. It’s not hard to follow as long as you do the tutorials and follow what they say. At the beginning you can’t go wrong there’s nothing negative I can say about it. I’ve never had any issues using this and I’ve used this software at two different colleges. Hands down the best.

Cons:

There’s only one thing that I kind of don’t really understand is the virtual classroom thing I’ve still not understood why some places use the virtual product classroom and sign the right space software and some don’t but I think that’s more of a college preference instead of a software preference to bright space

Alright There are better options

Comments: My experience with Brightspace has been somewhat positive although I would go researching more alternatives

Pros:

One of the features I like most about Brightspace is the progress tracking. If a student is behind on an assignment or more than it highlights on their course.

Cons:

At the time I was introduced to Brightspace, the previous learning environment stopped operations resulting in everyone having to adjust to Brightspace. One of the features I like the least about bright space is not being able to access Brightspace on mobile. It is difficult to view it on mobile and other classroom tools are able to view it on mobile

Suitable but not great

Comments: Brightspace allows completion of basic tasks for learner management and grade dissemination. However, it is frustrating to use and has more case-by-case / glitching problems that other learning management softwares I have used. It allows me to get the job done, and I suppose I will get used to it eventually, but it is certainly not ideal.

Pros:

Brightspace makes it easy to contact students in a class. I like the 'classlist' feature that lists all the students in a class and their university-related contact email. This simplifies either bulk-emailing students (as an instructor) and finding students to study with (as a student). It is also a secure site to centrally access all the information necessary for all my courses.

Cons:

Brightspace provides multiple places to find the same things. This is confusing, especially when some assignments are loaded in a given course module but not in the 'Assignments' tab, or vice versa. There are multiple levels of redundancy that are not kept consistent throughout the interface, so it is often confusing to locate materials. Brightspace is also slow to load. Often, when moving between tabs when I am creating a quiz for the students I teach or grading material, the browser loads for 30-45 seconds before transitioning pages. This is frustrating. After a class is officially 'over', the course pages are greyed out and prevent access (even when a school has not officially ended yet). This happens immediately after the final in a class, which prevents students from going in to do final grade calculations or download any materials. This is frustrating. Brightspace has had many issues with plugins, such as Kaltura Media Gallery, which disable access or have perpetual loading or glitching. This leaves the software as unreliable.

D2L LMS Review

Comments: My overall experience with D2L is a great experience. I enjoy using this product as a staff, as well as a student. There are also many tutorial videos out there to search through when having an issue.

Pros:

What I like most about this product is the ease of navigating each feature of the product. There are quite a few features, all of them being outstanding and easy to use.

Cons:

There seem to be quite a few bugs for us with this product. However, the product has been integrated going on two years, so there is bound to be some issues going forward.

Aesthetically Pleasing and Easy to Use

Comments: We have been able to boost productivity consistency, and quality using Brightspace. It is easier to build out courses and map them in a simple hierarchy. Course templating allows us to ensure consistency when building copies of courses or new versions.
Brightspace has also allowed us to automate a number of functions we would normally need to perform in terms of student management, which has freed up personnel for other tasks but also removed human error from the equation.

Pros:

Brightspace is very intuitive; users can jump into the LMS and figure out what they need to do with little to no instructions. I like the power it gives admins to build in automation and customize how students work through the course. This is done via intelligent agents and release conditions. Brightspace just looks great. Is the most aesthetically pleasing LMS on the market as far as I have seen.

Cons:

The platform seems more geared toward traditional schooling systems rather than asynchronous models at times. For example, there is no easy way for students to add their own due dates to assessments; they can only be added for the entire course, which does not work when students are all pacing differently. Brightspace for Parents is also not as strong as I would have expected. There seems to be limited features and out parents are just not really interested in using it.

Brightspace user (Bigsky)

Comments: I love using Brightspace (Bigsky). It is easy to learn, and I even volunteer to assist other faculty members.
As a retired faculty member, I would look for the features I enjoyed with Brightspace when given the opportunity to use other LMS.

Pros:

It has gamification, and once the course has been set up, everything is like clockwork.

Cons:

Just the setting up at the start of every semester, BUT, it is worth the time.

D2L - Academic Freedom!

Comments: I have used it as a Faulty member for the last 10+ years without any assistance for regular use. Now I am using Widgets, Icon's, and Homepage design without involving the Administrator

Pros:

D2L is always looking ahead and improving and adding new features

Cons:

Some features have a few got ya's such as not being able to manage due dates in discussions

A Good LMS Option

Comments: The school made the right choice in switching to Brightspace. It's quick and easy to understand

Pros:

It has many of the same features of other LMS options, such as Blackboard and Angel. It has many advantages over a product such as Moodle. It's easy to understand and the cleanest user interface of all major college LMSs

Cons:

It needs a video class option, similar to Blackboard UltraCollaborate

Brightspace 5 stars

Comments: I love brightspace! I haven’t used any other website and I don’t want to

Pros:

Bright space is easy to use. I can easily find where my work is and when it needs to be done.

Cons:

Sometimes, things can get lost but this is usually a teacher error.

Great LMS with great features and good user interface

Comments: My experience is positive with D2L to manage our corporate training. Being able to create courses, teach classes and grade also helps us a lot to improve and increases communication between everyone, and we also use it from anywhere.

Pros:

I like this LMS because it gives us the necessary functions to manage online learning. I also really liked the user interface and being able to create content and grade intuitively.

Cons:

Everything is going well except the analysis which usually gives some problems.

Very useful

Comments: Very easy to use

Pros:

Easy to use, I can view all coursework and courses and grades

Cons:

Overall I like it all, nothing found that I haven't liked yet

Brightspace is simple, quick and easy to hit the ground running

Pros:

Brightspace is straightforward and to the point. Developing courses in Brightspace is simple and the end result is quite beautiful and attractive for students.

Cons:

Brightspace lacks many features of other LMSs such as Canvas and Blackboard.

An Educators Review of Brightspace

Comments: Overall Brightspace has allowed for easy and efficient course taking and an organized space for students and educators to communicate and work well together as a team.

Pros:

Overall, Brightspace allows educators to design useful online courses that enable students to succeed and achieve a degree from the comfort of their homes if reaching a campus is not a possibility.

Cons:

Brightspace has attempted to integrate a video feature where a course can be held online through a video platform however this feature is constantly lagging and still needs much work before it will function well.

Brightspace, keeps users in the dark.

Comments: I have taught online for over a decade and used multiple different platforms, and I am sorry to write that this is by far the worst program I have ever used. Editing tools are not named well. There is no instructor file or content repository for easy access. You have to drill down in multiple pages to make simple course edits, and guiding students is not easy. There is not a natural flow or progression where the student can easily move from one assignment to the next.

Pros:

I know this is bad, but I can honestly say I haven’t found anything I like about the Brightspace program! The only good thing I can think of is the college has selected a bolt-on (Zoom) and it is important for live synchronous meetings. The recordings can be easily accessed from within the course tools.

Cons:

Brightspace is not user friendly from an instructor’s perspective. Points have to be changed in multiple places. Constantly having to switch to the “student view” to see if instructions have loaded correctly or saved recent changes is not an efficient way to function or make course edits. You can’t add points when reading discussions, you have to go out to a separate page to enter points/grades. The list could go on and on.

Brightspace Brightens my Class

Pros:

Brightspace is very easy to navigate and customize. It looks very nice and many uses familiar with something like Wordpress will have a pretty easy time. It is also in many ways similar to other popular social media platforms for students, I imagine, they are pretty comfortable with a platforms like this. Managing grades, assignments and embedding external links is very organic. There are some great tutorials too form D2L. It's also similar enough to other platforms that if you are migrating from another system, this shouldn't have too much of a learning curve. I love how easy it is to build a template course and transition various components or modules to a new one.

Cons:

My only con is purely subjective, but I have had issues with embedded links like videos. I find it very hard to remove items from the Grades section (the gradebook). I constantly have to view a tutorial because it is so roundabout to remove an item from that section.

Its okay

Comments: We had to move platforms and this seemed a good choice. Not as changeable as I though it would be and to have them integrate anything new you have to submit and get on a "list" and get votes with the highest votes getting the work. Ridiculous. Hire more people. Service everyone. That's what companies do no?

Pros:

The interface looks nice, and it's easy to sort student. The discussion board threading works well, and the left hand menu bar is easy to navigate. I appreciate that there are multiple ways to arrive at different areas in the course, and the seminar integration is really easy and nice.

Cons:

I wish the seminar would let me review the actual comments as I grade, the integration of a competency based rubric is clunky, when you have a CLA as well as something else for an assignment one overwrites the other in a very maddening way taking multiple steps to finish up a grade. The announcements section is now difficult for students to read, but that could just be our set up as well.

D2L Brightspace

Comments: Tracks students progress and grades so that students and faculty may track student progress.

Pros:

It is easy for faculty and student to use and integrates with publisher assignments.

Cons:

There is nothing that is missing to that I don't like about D2L.

Brightspace was easy to learn as a student!

Comments: It allows for great communication between students and teachers and overall was simple to understand from both perspectives!

Pros:

I enjoyed the formatting and how easy to use brightspace was compared to the previous software my university used. It made tracking grades and all of the content my teacher posted so much easier to follow. It also shows how your grades were compared to other students and allows you to track your own performance. When I was a TA, it was also really easy to post news items, enter grades and insert comments on students' papers. Easy to understand for all users!

Cons:

It can be difficult to operate on mobile devices - there are less buttons to navigate the pages but it's not impossible to use.

Great online classroom tool

Pros:

It’s easy to see what’s next/where you’re at. Cuts down on much of the visual clutter and steps you need to take to get where you want.

Cons:

It could be a bit slow at times, but I think that was a server/isolated IT issue.

Simple for students, set up takes work

Comments: Very happy with it from a student side when the faculty take time to set it up. But setting up a good classroom can be more work than teaching.

Pros:

Have used Brighspace as a student and as a faculty. As long as the faculty sets it up well it is exceedingly easy to navigate. The features really benefit the educational experience.

Cons:

Setting up the individual course takes time. I felt like I needed to be a coder to actually use to features. We have two full time hired staff to help keep the online classes in this running. Also, the email is ridiculously complicated.

Fantastic for everyone from beginners to people who want to do some unique activities and grading

Pros:

I was recently employed by Texas Christian University as an adjunct professor, and this was the first time I had ever taught a class at a different university. I had never used Brightspace before and to be honest I was a little bit overwhelmed with it at first. There are so many different functions and options that at first glance it seems like it will take months to learn. However, I think their help section is really user friendly and within a day I had my class pretty much set up. I love all of the more advanced grading features and automatic % calculations that this does, it saves so much time as I used to do this all in Excel. Also, I was only on campus once/week and was driving from over 40 minutes away on days that I was there. So, having office hours on days off was pretty much not going to happen. However, Brightspace has an amazing feature that can connect you to students over video chat from anywhere! This allowed me to have more personal 1-on-1 time with students who needed help while not having to drive all the way to campus!

Cons:

There is quite a bit of a learning curve to get to the more complex stuff, but after you learn it your productivity skyrockets.

The BEST resource for school

Pros:

This resource carefully organizes all your school material. It allows for each class to have a separate section. It is like a virtual binder. Teachers can upload quizes, tests, and any additional material. Such a great resource for any age student. I have been using it for over 6 years now.

Cons:

It sometimes glitches which makes it difficult to submit assignments, look up something, but that will happen with any software.

Best Software for Universities to use!

Comments: Absolutely one of the best softwares for courses on the market. Highly recommend and it is used at the top universities in the country.

Pros:

D2L is the most organized and functional software for universities to use. Students have one place to access all their courses and find all information they need. Using d2L, professors post all the content from their course and organize it however they want. Quizzes, discussions, and assignment drop boxes are found on D2L as well. D2L provides easy online accessibility for both teachers and students, making going to school a much easier task.

Cons:

The due dates for assignments get confusing, not sure if thats a user error via professors, but they always seem to have to email student to say they don't know how to change the due date for certain assignments.

The Right LMS for Our Environment

Comments: I mostly encounter the platform when working a project seeking to integrate with the product. To this point, I haven't been limited much on what I can do from an ETL or integration perspective.

Pros:

Brightspace offers a clean UI and flexibility to meet our LMS needs. Our faculty and student body enjoy using it daily to manage course activities. Our staff like the openness of the platform for implementing new integrations and working with data.

Cons:

We've had significant issues with the vendor-provided API in the past. We push grades from Brightspace to our SIS to populate student transcripts. When the API stopped working, it left us in a tight spot. Thankfully, the newer API seems more reliable.

I have used D2L almost daily for years and have never had an issue getting the info I need.

Pros:

I have loved using D2L for both my undergraduate and graduate studies. It has made submitting and keeping track of my assignments very easy. I love that it keeps everything on one easy to navigate website. I don't know what other options are out there, but I can't imagine anything being more user-friendly for students than this!

Cons:

I did not realize course access expires when I first started using D2L for my school work. I didn't bother downloading a lot of my class materials to my computer beacuse I assumed it would always be there for me to reference. I looked back a year or two later and saw that my classes had disappeared. I understand why, but I really wish there was a counter or notification before course removal so I could download any content I wanted. This is probably something managable by the school, but it would be great if D2L would notify the students.