Brightspace

Pros

Polished software with a multitude of features makes this an outstanding "investment".

Cons

Pricing is competitive, however some value-added services are locked behind a premium/paid tier.

Alternatives Considered

Switched From

Pros

So user friendly, easy to navigate, aesthetic but also functionally designed

Cons

Email system is a little archaic, could be changed to a chat system

Pros

Nothing. See comments below about experiences.

Cons

Everything. See comments below about experiences.

Pros

Very trustable
Visibility of team productivity
Helpful students reports

Cons

Hard to assemble
Negotiation complicated
Small support

Pros

I enjoy the way in which the content or each class is organized.

Cons

I am not a fan of the amount of email notifications sent by Brightspace (discussions, announcements, etc.). If you do not want to receive any of these notifications, you have to unsubscribe from each thread. It is timely and clutters the inbox.

Pros

Using the program means you don't have to re-invent the wheel. It's a great and well-designed educational program that I use as a university prof.

Cons

There are a few little things such as color coding for certain assignments that I still don't fully understand. But it's not critical.

Pros

I like that you can attend classes on your phone or on your computer using brightspace.

Cons

Viewing the instructor, power point , and the chat is not possible. You can only do either the chat view slides or the teacher.

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

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.

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.

Pros

I like how brightspace provides an area for all information to be put together in one place.

Cons

I find brightspace to be annoying sometimes mostly because of the way the website is set up. It could easily be improved to fix this.

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.

Pros

There’s a lot of different things to access from this software

Cons

It’s not that user friendly, I have a hard time navigating thru it.

Pros

I used D2L Brightspace throughout all of university. In terms of uploading any learning documents such as assignments, solutions, homework, PowerPoints, lecture videos, and more, it was always very easy to navigate and get what you need on your computer or on mobile. Navigation is very simple, and the user interface is easy to learn. The best feature was the notifications bell which I used the most to have consistent and clear updates for all of my courses.

Cons

I think there are some aspects of the user interface which could be redesigned to be more aesthetically pleasing. Some features and sections appear out of date and could use some visual improvements. The onus of including or excluding certain sections I believe is on the onus of the professor, but maybe there could be more clear instruction to them on how to best format course pages/sections.

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.

Pros

I love that I can take these classes outside of school. I am currently taking four classes on Brightspace (Sociology, Psychology, Spanish III Semesters 1 & 2) because I could not fit them into my schedule for my senior year. In addition, each class comes with a "90 Day Plan" in the course materials, which helps keep me on track; I try to do more per day than what is on the plan, as I'm trying to get most of the workload finished before school starts again.
This brings me to my next point: Working at my own speed! As evidenced by my taking four classes over the summer, I am an advanced student who is serious about her education. Brightspace gives students the flexibility of working at their own speed. Although a "90 Day Plan" is offered as a guideline, there are no daily requirements set by the software itself. As a high schooler, some days I'm just busy, plain and simple. I don't have to worry about fulfilling a daily requirement with Brightspace. Again, the flexibility of completing online courses at my own pace is invaluable to a busy student like myself.

Cons

There's not much to complain about with this software. However, there is one issue I face on the daily with Brightspace. When working on a lesson, every now and again there will be a little box that pops up warning the user that if the session exceeds 30 minutes of inactivity, they will be logged out and will have to log back in again. I understand that it is set to do this for security reasons, but it is incredibly annoying when I'm taking notes on the lesson (which takes a decent amount of time) to have to be wary of the pop up appearing.

Pros

Brightspace has tons of features and capabilities that teachers and students can use in learning! Through assignments with release conditions, video and audio recording for instructions and responses, homepage customization, and much more. There are few things that you are limited to with Brightspace.

Cons

Though there are many features in Brightspace, they can often be tedious and complicated to create and use. For example, creating tests/quizzes in brightspace is a very important tool for teachers to give formative assessments. The creation tool works, but takes many more steps and work when compared to other quiz creation tools, such as Google Forms. This applies to almost all features on Brightspace. When using this with younger students - Pre-K through 5th grade - that can take a toll on time and learning.

Pros

BrightSpace includes all of the typical features of any LMS. However, D2L has improved the platform over time and has made the system more intuitive and user friendly. I also use CourseDen (the higher ed version of BrightSpace) for my college courses and the features are essentially the same with a few differences. However, the two platforms are enough alike that, once you know one system, learning to use the other one is a cinch. The features allow for very specific customization of assessments, discussions, and other features. I have built my own courses within the LMS, so I am familiar with a majority of the features and capabilities of the LMS.

Pros

This Learning Management System is GOOD but not the best. It is great that D2L and Brightspace have an easy-to-use portal that differentiates between student, instructor, and even TAs. However, the options that come with competitors like CANVAS are far superior...

Cons

CANVAS, a competing LMS, provides more external resource use, such as Virtual Office Hours during Conferences, and even grouping students into smaller groups to use MS Office through Collaborations. Brightspace is user friendly for students but more difficult to manage for administrators/teachers.

Pros

I like the complex features that are offered by this LMS. Course creators can embed external sources, create several nested modules and access plenty of documentation. Users can also access content on nearly all browsers and operating systems.

Cons

There is a steep learning curve, and it can be difficult to even access basic course information as a learner, or to even find out how to create a single module for students as an administrator. The issues related to mobile access, Safari, and flash are still present in this LMS as well. It will be difficult to access certain pages, and some external links do not allow you to access them either.

Pros

I like the ability to stay on top of my assignments in classes and know what is to be expected throughout the semester. It is easy to see what is due week by week under the course content. I think the site is set up fairly well.

Cons

I sometimes have trouble with the discussions section where I need to manually press that I have read another members posts, I wish it appeared automatically. It also took a bit to be able to navigate the site but after becoming familiar I have had no problems.

Pros

Brightspace puts a lot of options at the user's disposal. It is a powerful, robust LMS that can be customized to fit a wide variety of preferences. As an admin and as an instructor, I really appreciated that the system did not lock me in to one way of doing things.

I also really like how much, especially in recent years, the Brightspace development team seeks for input from its users (and provides great forums for sharing ideas for improvements).

Cons

Currently, Brightspace does not have a very robust way of setting up communications throughout the course. They use a feature called "intelligent agents" for sending notices to students when they meet certain criteria (for example, sending a particular note to a student when he is inactive in the course or performs particularly well on an assessment). This feature, however, lacks a good deal of "intelligence" and is pretty restricted in what it can do.

I also feel that much of Brightspace is not particularly intuitive or streamlined. I'd like to see them improve on ease of use (without sacrificing power). A good example of this is the quiz feature where finding the exact page you need to get to in order to edit questions and grade values is a bit like a scavenger hunt.

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.

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.

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.