Upgrading Our LMS, Enhancing Your Experience
The Brightspace Next initiative is a strategic project aimed at modernizing the D2L Brightspace Learning Management System (LMS) to better meet the evolving needs of students, faculty, and staff.
By focusing on improving the user experience, updating courses, and providing comprehensive training, Brightspace Next strives to deliver a consistent, intuitive, and easy-to-use learning environment for the entire university community.
Projects
In Progress
Course Site Deletion Policy
Ongoing
The University is implementing a new Course Site Deletion Policy for D2L Brightspace, beginning Spring 2025. This policy aims to enhance system performance, contain storage costs, and align with other student data retention policies on campus. The policy will establish a standard deletion procedure for course sites, ensuring efficient use of our Learning Management System.
FAQ
If the course is older than four years, it has been deleted. You can contact intech@arizona.edu for more information and assistance.
System health: UArizona adopted D2L Brightspace as its official LMS in 2005. Since then, the number of courses and storage space used has grown unsustainable.
The new contract, beginning in 2025, established storage limits of 125.3TB, with overages being charged by the gigabyte. Users with large course lists may face performance and functionality issues.
Privacy and security: Data should be retained in accordance with the University’s document retention best practices, which are rooted in retaining data for a specified period of time.
The LMS is not designed, equipped, nor contracted to provide long-term or unlimited storage.
Courses generated by our student information system (SIS) or any other courses with students enrolled will be removed four years after the official end date for the semester in which the course was offered.
Once a course has been removed through this procedure, the course or associated content will not be recoverable.
All content will be removed from the LMS. Video or other content stored in third-party services integrated with the LMS (e.g., Panopto, Playposit, H5P, etc.) will remain in third-party storage, subject to the retention policies of these services.
LMS administrators will check periodically with course site owners of Development (previously called Playspace) and Non-term course sites to determine whether those course sites are still necessary and delete them as needed. Any user listed as an Instructor in one of these courses may request that they be deleted at any time.
Instructors can export their LMS course site as a “common course cartridge”, which creates a .zip file of all the course contents that can be uploaded back into the LMS and/or into another LMS. Please note that these methods only save course content, not student data. This zip file can then be stored by the instructor.
These operating procedures were drafted in accordance with the university’s best practices regarding data retention and with input from the Office of the Registrar, Academic Affairs, Faculty Affairs, University Information Technology Services, the Office of the General Council, and the University Center for Assessment, Teaching, and Technology.
For questions, please contact Lisa Elfring.
D2L Brightspace Student Survey
Fall 2024
A collaborative effort between UCATT and Assessment and Research will conduct a campus-wide survey in Fall 2024 to gather student feedback on D2L Brightspace usage and effective instructional practices. The results will provide valuable insights into student preferences and needs, helping instructors optimize their use of the Learning Management System and improve teaching methods to better support learning outcomes.
- Survey Development- Spring 2024
- Pilot Survey- Summer 2024
- Survey Active- September 23-October 25
- Data Analysis and Report- Fall 2024
D2L Brightspace EDGE Trainings
Summer 2024-Spring 2025
New faculty training on D2L Brightspace will be available through the EDGE Learning platform. These courses offer various learning paths to enhance instructors' skills in using the LMS effectively. Participants can earn certifications while expanding their knowledge, helping them to better leverage Brightspace in their teaching.
D2L Brightspace Health Check
Fall 2024-Spring 2025
UCATT is partnering with D2L to conduct a comprehensive review of how we use Brightspace institutionally. Through this review, we are identifying and implementing changes that will improve our use of Brightspace.
Rebrand from D2L to Brightspace
Fall 2024-Spring 2025
In 2014, D2L changed the name of the Learning Management System to Brightspace, however, the U of A never updated our naming conventions and branding. With the new contract, we are ready to fully adopt Brightspace branding across all of our websites and documentation.
Upcoming
Course Building Style Guide
Spring 2025
Establish a Course Building Style Guide to provide consistency in suggestions and training for faculty and instructional support staff. The key priorities of this style guide are accessibility, functionality, sustainable design, and navigation, ensuring that courses are user-friendly, effective, and easily maintainable.
Brightspace Institute
Spring 2025-Spring 2026
The Brightspace Institute offers instructors a hands-on, supportive environment to enhance course design and instruction skills in the LMS. This immersive program is designed to boost confidence and proficiency in using Brightspace, empowering faculty to create engaging online learning experiences.
Course Redesigns
Summer 2025-Spring 2027
Instructors will receive guidance to update existing courses to support student learning. Student survey results will be used to identify courses for redesign, and corresponding instructors or course developers will be invited to partake in the redesign process.
Excellence in Course Design Award
Spring 2026
Establish an award to honor instructors and staff who demonstrate commitment and excellence in online course design. By recognizing outstanding courses, we aim to encourage and promote effective approaches to online learning across the university.
Completed
RFP for the Learning Management System
Spring 2023-Fall 2023
The RFP Committee reviewed all vendor submissions, and with consideration and discussion, the committee recommended D2L Brightspace due to its high scores across all evaluation criteria.