Brightspace Software

A satisfactory LMS with areas for improvement

Pros

- UI has been modernized and made responsive
- useful on a large scale

Cons

- no integration with PeopleSoft
- administrative functions are not user-friendly; functions hidden behind too many buttons
- lack of up-to-date documentation
- very expensive

Great LMS Full of Dynamic Features

Brightspace has been a fantastic tool for helping my students engage. I use it to organize content and manage their schedule so that we're all on the same page at the same time.

Pros

Brightspace really helps to make learning more accessible for students and instructors alike. There's a bit of a learning curve, but once the tools are familiar, they allow for great options.

Cons

It may be a local configuration issue, but we've used Brightspace for six years and I still can't get it to forward messages to my actual e-mail. I can get 15 different notifications, but none of them are for new e-mail.

Better than other options.

Useful.

Pros

It’s far more user friendly than other options. My students and myself find it easy to navigate.

Cons

The email functionality is not great, while it can forward to a personal email you cannot respond from that email. It causes lots of confusion.

Feature rich, but not intuitive, LMS

Pros

The customer support team is excellent, providing very helpful advice and bug fixes almost at a whim! Whenever we've had a problem, Brightspace were they almost instantly to lend a hand.
There are a huge list of features on offer, allowing for a wide variety of lessons and exercises be taught.
The session in-activity is incredibly useful, we use this in shared-classrooms where its not guaranteed that the user will log-out when finished.

Cons

Not very easy to use, buttons and tools seem to be hidden away either within a menu or a seemingly random location.
Communicating with attendees via Brightspace is a pain, there isn't an easy way to send out bulk emails to students. There is some automated process here, but just sending out a basic text email to all students on a course would be very useful.

A platform for learning with its own learning curve

Brightspace has allowed our students to access course information online and in hybrid environments. The LMS is powerful and can produce quality courses that are highly customizable and interactive. I have used it for around six months now as an instructor and have noticed that while it is powerful, you might want to trial it out alongside a couple of other competitors to find one that fits you.

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.

Great for Online Learning

As a student my expirience with Brightspace has been nothing but positive.

Pros

As a college student, I have used D2L for 3 years. I have taken a handful of all online classes whose only presence was via Brightspace. Brightspace has created a really nice online environment for classes, you can host all your content there, provide quizzes/tests within Brightspace. Theres even a discussion board for talking with other class members or the instructor. I like being able to work at my own pace, which is what an online class provides, and Brightspace provides all the features to host a well developed online class.

Cons

Auto-saving responses on tests doesn't work always. This is a relatively new feature though so, I'm sure it will get fixed soon.

Easy to Learn and Use

It’s a great way to keep all my class content in one space

Pros

I liked its ease of use. We use it at the school where I work, and when I first started there, it took me no time at all to figure out!

Cons

Really, I can’t think of any major cons. Even when it goes down, they get it fixed right away.

Brightspace Review

Pros

Brightspace give me a chance to come back again in school, this help me so much even I'm on my work or house. I'm still in touch.

Cons

As of now there's no cons, but I'm looking for more good features but yet its good enough. Nothing else more.

Poor excuse for a modern LMS

No benefits realized. Purely a frustrating experience having to use this LMS to manage my post-secondary classes.

Pros

Nothing at all.
The LMS has a LONG list of features but nearly all of them are poorly designed and frustrating to use.
I have moved back to old solutions that I used before I was given this piece of software.
Clearly no teachers with any experience were consulted in the design of this.
There was a huge opportunity for D2L when they moved from their old solution to a new Cloud based one. They missed the opportunity

Cons

The interface was not intuitive. There were very few clear best practices in the interface. The way that you complete tasks changes depending on which part of the interface you are using.
Non-technical users will become quickly frustrated with the number of steps required to complete even the most basic of tasks.
The interface feels like it was built by different groups of developers and designers who didn't communicate with each other. Every developer had their own idea about how to accomplish a task.
Many default options are counter to what an actual teacher would need in their day-to-day tasks.
Nothing in the interface saves you work.
Every task prolongs how long it takes me to do something.
After months of trying to use this tool I have given up and am now searching for alternative tools that make my life easier not harder.

Brightspace Review

Pros

Brightspace giving me a chance to come back in studying, it always meet my expectation and help me so much.

Cons

As always need an internet connection to connect in your course. But still i like it so much!

Brightspace Review

Pros

Brightspace keeping me and always on track on my online course. This gave me an easy way of studying.

Cons

Always demand an internet connection to keep you on track to your course. Nothing big deal about that.

Great Application

Pros

EVERYTHING!! easy to use, great interface, love it!

Cons

None that I have seen yet.

Love it

Pros

I love BrightSpace. My old school switched from another LMS that did not have near as many features as BrightSpace. I was happy to learn that my new school also uses BrightSpace.

Cons

I cannot think of any cons about BrightSpace. However, starting a job at another school after using BrightSpace taught me that it is very important that it is set up right. My new school is not using many of the features that my old school uses. I think it is important to make sure that each school sets it up to make sure that students are able to get everything they can from it.

Beautiful tool for an online student

Pros

Great layout and design. Very easy to navigate and a breeze to learn how to use. Great for an online student because everything is step by step and you don’t feel overwhelmed with your work.

Cons

I have not had any negative interactions using this online student portal. I believe there was only one instance that brightspace was down because of a planned upgrade and they did a good job notifying their users ahead of time.

Good LMS but not all-encompassing

Brightspace by D2L was useful for implementing a live course's online material, but the program lacks important components that are necessary for online courses.

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.

The Middle of the Pack

Pros

Course building tools are intuitive for the most part.

Cons

It can be a bit buggy. Students have complained about their work being lost when they go to submit. This could very well be operator error, but still.

Brightspace: The flexible, cloud based, LMS. Created by D2L, 2014.

Possibilities for educators: Communicate with students via email and online conference. Accept online discussions. Manage their grades. Customize the appearance of the course pages. Share the content of the lessons and the multimedia with the students. They can comment. Develop instructions and assignments in foreign languages. Create instructions and assignments using a mathematical note. Through its own builder that provides quizzes, multiplechoice, ruby ​​and even games. To incorporate portfolio-based activities into the work using the integrated ePortfolio system

Pros

-It places the student at the center of learning.
-It provides collaboration and interaction.
-It has a variety of tools.
-It combines most learning theories.
-It can be used by both educators and trainees.
-It combines education and learning resources with assessment and analysis features to create an integrated e-learning environment.

Cons

-The cost: It has an annual cost and is tailored to the number of users connected at the same time.
-It is not installed locally.
Course files are stored on a remote server that manages D2L.
-Network delay time is often slow and disturbing.

Smooth Transition and Adaptable Interface

Overall smooth transition with nicely organized rubric.

Pros

My university was previously using Blackboard before switching to Brightspace. During the transition we were able to explore and train in the new Brightspace course shells. The menu organization and dashboard tools are wonderfully intuitive, and I can easily switch between multiple courses.

Cons

While adaptable, there is some jumping required in some of the thread grading. I would love to see that set up become more harmonious with fewer windows to navigate.

Decent learning platform.

Pros

I took most of my master's level courses using this platform. After learning to navigate it, I became very familiar with it, and it was a decent platform for the professors to present material on. I liked how it would show notifications for discussion posts (particularly when someone would reply to something you had written). Also, it would alert you when a professor had submitted a grade for an assignment. These are great features that other learning platforms do not have, and I most definitely miss them when using those platforms.

Cons

It was not a very clean way to present material. It was a little cumbersome at times, took a lot of "getting used to," and was missing some features that would have been helpful that I had experienced on other platforms.

The students love it

Pros

Brightspace is a great way for young people but even older people to use as a platform to learn. Navigating around the website was easy and keeping track of assignment was too hard. This program is flexible and easy to manage.

Cons

The setting up can be tricky and requires some trial and error until we get the right combination. There are little things that are annoying and requires to take that little extra step every time.