Brightspace Project Updates

We will use the Dickinson Today announcement feature to share information and updates. We’ll keep an archive of those communications here.

Copy of email that was sent on 3/10/25 to faculty that will be using Brightspace in Fall 2025:

Thank you again for signing up to transition from Moodle to Brightspace for this coming Fall. Previously I sent out a message with some “I’ll have these things done by next week” items. Well now the things are done and I have training details that I didn’t previously have.

Here are some important bullet-point style things for you to know right off the bat:

• You now can access 2 courses in Brightspace (Sandbox course—use as you please; Training course—please leave alone for now)
  • Link to Brightspace: https://courses.dickinson.edu/
  • When you feel like you’re ready to start building your real courses, let me know and I can make those frames for you.
  • We’re going to have many opportunities for trainings and consultations (see below). However, I also realize there are people that learn best by just clicking on all the buttons. If that’s your plan, it’s okay…but please let me know so that I give you some tips.
• Instructor Basics Training: April 2nd 10 am to 12 pm is a Zoom training with a D2L trainer. Please come if you can.
  • Zoom link for that: [link removed since this blog is public]
• Asynchronous training option available:
  • Step 1: Make an account on the Brightspace Community using your Dickinson email address: https://community.d2l.com/brightspace
  • Step 2: Enroll in this course using that Community account: https://community.desire2learn.com/d2l/home/14828  When I signed up, it didn’t work right away but then I came back to it 10 minutes later and it worked. I’m thinking it takes a little bit for your new Community account to totally get set up.
• Moodle content will migrate this spring. Please let us know if you do NOT need anything from Moodle moved over.
• Summer Training Schedule
  • Open “office hours” with me in June, July, August: Every Monday at 10 and Thursday at 2.
  • Repeat of Instructor Basics training and feature-specific training schedule TBD.
• 1 on 1 appointment sign-ups—Not required, but available whenever you need one of us.
  • Go to the project page and scroll down to where it says you can sign up for a consultation: https://www.dickinson.edu/homepage/1730/learning_management_system_project
• I will leave you alone until I have the recording from the April 2^nd training. Once I have that, I’ll share it with all of you and provide you with any new details we have like Moodle content migrations, further training opportunities, etc.

More Information that’s less important than what’s above:

Please do as much or as little as you are comfortable with in your Sandbox course. It can always be reset back to empty if you want. Please also know that there are some things that you may see that don’t seem right. That’s because we’re not completely finished with the button-pushing part of implementation. For example, you’ll see that you can add a “virtual classroom” to your course. You really can’t but we haven’t yet learned how to remove that as an option for you.

I have the AI features turned off by default. If you’d like them turned on in your Sandbox, please let me know. Mostly what it does is you’ll see an option to use AI to help you come up with assignment ideas, discussion prompts, quiz questions, etc.

We suggest once you feel comfortable with the platform and how things are done, start building at least a “skeleton” of your course as soon as possible and then meet with one of us to go over it together. By “skeleton” I mean putting a few weeks together with items but without details. For example, you could have a lesson called Week 3 that has a placeholder for a content page that introduces the lesson, a link out to a reading, an assignment placeholder (no details, just a blank assignment there), and a blank quiz.

Stuff from a previous email you may have missed but is important:

• We’re working on a tutorial library that you’ll have access to in the next couple of months.
• My team and I are available for 1 on 1 consultations as much or as little as you need.
• Once we finish the tutorial library, we’re going to create some course frames that will serve as “Starter Packs.” Once they’re complete, you’d be able to copy them into your course frame to help you get started.

March 2025 D2L Brightspace Project Update: 

• The project now kind of moves into multiple phases that happen simultaneously.

  • Technical work: Enterprise Systems (within ITS) will work to set up SSO, Moodle content migration, and the Banner integration. When this work is completed (likely May or perhaps sooner), courses and enrollments will automatically sync up with the official Banner records like they do with Moodle. Additionally, the Academic Technology team will work to integrate LTI tools like Panopto, Zoom, Teams, Office 365, etc. Integration of those tools with D2L Brightspace will not interfere with those same tools being integrated with Moodle. Also, the Moodle content migration will not have any effect on those still using Moodle.

  • Design of the LMS: Academic Technology, in consultation with various faculty leaders within Academic Affairs, is working with D2L to make our instance of Brightspace what Dickinson needs it to be. D2L offers a lot of options to make sure that our LMS works well for us as opposed to only being able to set it up certain ways. For example, we’re currently working on setting up role permissions. Among the faculty we have those that hire Teaching Assistants with grading permissions and without grading permissions. We need to set up the roles and permissions for those. We’re also working to establish what D2L refers to as Org-Units so that our courses line up well with Sarah Neibler’s work with academic assessment. This will ensure a smooth process for academic assessment work among the faculty.

February 2025 D2L Brightspace Project Update:

As announced and explained in the December 2024 faculty meeting, the college is transitioning from Moodle to D2L Brightspace as our learning management system (LMS). We look forward to sharing a detailed project plan at a faculty meeting later this spring.

In the meantime, we need your help. We ask that faculty complete a form to make us aware of their intended semester of transition. If you choose Fall 2025 we do ask that you lock into that choice unless something comes up that makes it no longer feasible. If you choose either of the other options, you’re certainly not locked in to that choice, but it helps us plan. There is no hard deadline on the form, but we’re targeting March 10 as when we’ll look at the results to begin planning the timeline for faculty. That gives you about 3 weeks to think, ask questions, etc.  

Here is the form: https://forms.office.com/r/mSTKgB7UiM 

You may recall that the plan is to have any new faculty plus a group of 20-30 volunteers move to the new LMS for Fall 2025, then ideally have 50% of faculty on the new LMS in Spring 2026, and 100% of faculty on the new LMS in Fall 2026. This means there’s a lot of room for individuals to have agency over their own transition timeline and there’s a lot of time for our Academic Technology team to support you.

Within Academic Technology, we’re very excited about this project. We’re most excited about working with all of you to build upon the amazing experiences and opportunities Dickinson delivers for our students. We know that change in general can be exciting or scary depending on your personal situation and we want you all to know that we’re here for you and that our goal is for you and your students to be successful. You’ll see in the form that even if you would like to wait until Spring 26 or Fall 26, there are still opportunities for you to get a head start and come to a good starting place at your own pace.

Please be sure to keep up to date on the project by reading Dickinson Today announcements and vising the project page:

https://www.dickinson.edu/homepage/1730/learning_management_system_project 

Looking forward to working with you on this project,

James D’Annibale

January 2025 D2L Brightspace Project Update:

We held the official kickoff meeting on January 22^nd. The first month or so will be a lot of meetings for Academic Technology, Infrastructure Services, and some other participants depending on the topic of the meeting. This phase of implementation is commonly referred to as Discovery and Design. D2L needs to learn from us how we’d like to do certain things like SSO authentication, organizing courses into sub-units within the system, send roster information from Banner to Brightspace, incorporate the academic assessment workflow into Brightspace, etc. As we explain to our partners at D2L how things need to be done, the D2L people will make our Brightspace instance match our needs. You can learn more about the project here: Learning Management System Project | Dickinson College