UArizona is undergoing a review of its current Learning Management System (LMS) needs to best promote student success. This page serves as an information portal for this effort.
The LMS is perhaps the most heavily used system at the University, with D2L being UArizona’s primary LMS. From readings and discussions to online quizzing and gradebooks, the LMS is a critical piece of our technology ecosystem and the student and faculty course-related experience for all types of courses.
Our contract with our current LMS, D2L Brightspace (D2L), expires in January 2025. As a state agency, we are required to conduct a request for proposals (RFP) for all major contracts. An RFP is an evaluation process and does not necessarily mean we are changing our current LMS.
Knowing that an LMS is a critical piece of infrastructure and supports a great deal of what we do across the entire institution, we will ensure that the whole community of students, faculty, and staff will be engaged in providing feedback on their needs, reviewing and assessing candidate systems according to established criteria, and shaping the final decision. The committee does not make the final decision. They provide their recommendation to the Provost, who will make the final decision and announce the decision in early spring 2024.
The RFP Evaluation Committee is made up of instructors and staff who are representative of the broader campus community.
Selection Committee
- Roger Miesfeld, Distinguished Professor of Chemistry & Biochemistry
- Paul Blowers, Distinguish Professor, Engineering
- Ginger Hunt, Senior Director, College of Law
- Laura Lustro, Senior Program Coordinator, College of Science
- Lisa Rezende, Associate Professor of Practice, Science
- Rob Stephan, Associate Professor, Humanities
- Lara Tarantini, Senior. Instructional Technologist, UCATT
- Romi Wittman, Associate Professor of Practice, CAST
- Na Zuo, Associate Professor of Practice, CALS
Campus Representatives
Representatives from the following areas will be non-voting members of the committee.
- Dawn Hunziker, Disability Resource Center
- Caleb Simmons, Arizona Online
- Rebecca Cook, Career and Professional Education
- Leslie Sult, UA Libraries
- Katie Southard, General Education
- Caleb Simmons, Faculty Senate
The final decision for the RFP is made and announced by the Provost.
If you have general questions about the RFP process please contact Roger Miesfeld, Melody Buckner, and Lisa Elfring.
Timeline
Project Updates
Updates and communications will be posted here. Please check back to stay informed.
Dear Colleagues,
We are pleased to announce that after a thorough RFP process, Brightspace by D2L has been selected to continue as the University's learning management system (LMS).
The selection committee appreciated input from partners across campus and thoughtful feedback provided through surveys, focus groups, and conversations throughout the review process. This comprehensive input was invaluable for making the best LMS decision on behalf of our students, faculty, and staff. We are grateful for the insights from the community and particularly for the time and care the evaluation committee, led by Roger Miesfeld, put into this process.
Brightspace best matched our needs because of its reliability, customization abilities, integration with University systems, and ability to adapt over time. Its automated tools help monitor student engagement, while updated assessments aim to increase instructor efficiency. This multi-year agreement with D2L ensures we can continue relying on a robust, reliable LMS tailored to our unique academic needs.
This decision provides continuity since we currently use a classic version of Brightspace. It also affords us an opportunity to implement new Brightspace features and processes related to course design and teaching.
In the coming weeks, an LMS coordination committee will meet with partners across campus to create recommendations for improving the Brightspace experience for students, faculty, and staff. As we work together to implement this newly updated version of Brightspace, our priority remains supporting an exceptional teaching and learning experience.
To stay current on the LMS coordination committee, please subscribe to the UCATT Connection.
Sincerely,
Lisa Elfring
Vice Provost, Assessment, Teaching and Technology
The University of Arizona
The LMS RFP Committee completed round 1 and round 2 scoring and submitted its report to Procurement on December 1. Procurement and Contracting Services is now analyzing the committee's recommendation report and preparing the intent to award. The contract award will likely be announced to campus around January 22nd, pending the completion of the procurement process.
The LMS Request for Proposal (RFP) committee has completed round 1 of proposal scoring and identified the top vendors to move forward. These vendors have been invited to provide product demonstrations and respond to additional questions from the committee.
We are currently in round 2 of the RFP process, where vendors will present live demos to the committee and respond to scenarios that assess their platform capabilities in depth. The committee will carefully score each presentation and response to make further evaluations.
The selected vendor will be determined based on the combined round 1 and 2 results. The committee will compile a report summarizing their analysis, scoring, and final recommendation. This report will be completed and submitted to procurement in December 2023.
The goal of this thorough RFP process is to select a high-quality LMS platform that can meet the diverse needs of our institution. We appreciate your patience as the committee undertakes this careful product evaluation to inform our decision.
The LMS RFP town hall on April 24 presented the RFI & RFP timeline, briefly shared the RFI Survey findings, and gathered feedback through discussion questions. The event saw 271 registrations, with 176 attendees from the campus community.
Using chat responses, participants engaged in productive discussions guided by RFI project committee-crafted questions. The recorded session, along with the Zoom chat transcript, provided valuable insights.
We identified key themes through open coding, refining them to five to reflect constituents' concerns accurately. No edits altered content, ensuring transparency. This town hall facilitated informed dialogue, enhancing the RFP criteria and the overall process for the RFP for the learning management system.
The RFI Survey was sent to a large number of faculty, staff, and students on February 13 and remained open until March 3 with 686 respondents completing the survey.
Our objectives for this survey were:
- Determine the priorities of our stakeholders for the LMS
- Level of satisfaction with our current LMS
- Collect interested volunteers for a sandbox evaluation of platforms
- Provide a means for campus-wide engagement with the RFI/RFP process
Based on the feature ranking responses and open-response questions, we found that respondents from all roles prioritized a course site that was easy to navigate, easy to customize, supported instructor autonomy and identity, and made grading easy.
We also asked respondents their level of satisfaction with the current LMS, D2L, and found that the majority in all roles selected "satisfied" or "very satisfied."
For more detailed information about the survey findings, you can download the RFI Survey Report.
The University Center for Assessment, Teaching and Technology is conducting a Request for Information (RFI) process to explore Learning Management System (LMS) options. The University currently uses Desire2Learn (D2L), an integrated LMS that creates a single place online for instructors and students to interact, either for a completely online course or as a supplement to a face-to-face course.
We are seeking feedback from faculty, staff and students as part of the RFI process. Please set aside some time to respond to the survey by March 3. It should only take two minutes to complete.
Next Steps: RFP Process
A formal Request for Proposal (RFP) process will begin in fall 2023, which will include broad campus engagement to evaluate and select the system that will provide the strongest foundation for supporting student success. In January 2024, we will announce which vendor/platform has been selected.
The RFI and RFP processes are required by the state of Arizona to ensure that the University continues to use state-of-the-art tools to support our academic mission.
There will be additional opportunities to provide your insight on potential platforms later this semester. To receive regular email updates about this project, subscribe to the UCATT mailing list.
More information is available on this page.
Thank you for your support and for taking the time to complete the survey.
Sincerely,
Melody Buckner
Associate Vice Provost, Digital Learning and Online Initiatives
Lisa Elfring
Associate Vice Provost, Instruction and Assessment
The University of Arizona