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D2L Brightspace Educational Services Reviews & Insights

Score8.7 out of 10

78 Reviews and Ratings

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Community insights

TrustRadius Insights for D2L Brightspace are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.

Pros

Seamless migration process: Several users have stated that the migration process from ANGEL to D2L Brightspace was smooth and hassle-free. This suggests that D2L Brightspace has effective tools and support in place to ensure a seamless transition, minimizing disruptions for educational institutions.

Flexible customization options: Many reviewers have appreciated the ability to customize widgets and change the layout of home pages in D2L Brightspace. This feature allows instructors to personalize their course pages and create a tailored learning experience for students. It highlights the software's flexibility and adaptability in catering to individual instructor preferences and instructional needs.

Commitment to user feedback: The user community has expressed appreciation for D2L Brightspace's collection and prioritization of new ideas. This showcases the software's dedication to incorporating user feedback and continuously improving its features based on customer input. The emphasis on user feedback demonstrates D2L Brightspace's commitment to meeting the evolving needs and expectations of its users.

D2L Brightspace Reviews

39 Reviews
Educational ServicesHigher Education32Education Management5E-Learning2

And the award for best LMS ever goes to Brightspace!

Rating: 10 out of 10
Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Brightspace is currently being used as the LMS system for our campus. This is how we facilitate our online courses and also house various materials for our in-class sections. All in-class courses must complete their syllabi through Concourses integrated into Brightspace, use Brightspace email to communicate with the instructor, and also keep a gradebook in Brightspace. We have also used Brightspace to keep information for faculty and employee training materials.

Pros

  • The layout is amazing! Students who have used other LMS's have often commented on the ease of navigability Brightspace offers.
  • The annotation features for course assignments are easy to follow.
  • The layout of the homepage is very user-friendly and places focus on course announcements.
  • Brightspace email is also a bonus feature!

Cons

  • I wish there was a way that we could block students from their courses and provide notification as to why they have been locked out of their accounts.
  • I wish there was a way to change the order of pinned course in the my courses widget.
  • The instant messenger features in Brightspace are not really that great. I wish there was a way to link it to your phone or that it would provide a different alert. It currently works pretty similar to email.

Likelihood to Recommend

Brightspace offers, by far, the best customer support! I am always able to connect with chat support instantly to solve any issues. Our account managers check in monthly to make sure there are no issues on our end and Brightspace host frequent trainings for both faculty and administrators. Brightspace also host excellent professional development trainings with tips for facilitating online courses.

Their platform is also very easy to use.
TR
Traci Rushing
Instructional Designer - Faculty at Southern Arkansas University Tech (Higher Education, 51-200 employees)
Vetted Review
D2L Brightspace
3 years of experience
View profile

Brightspace - It's the whole package and more!

Rating: 10 out of 10
Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Working within a higher education institution, we need a product to deliver online courses through and to enhance all our other offerings, Brightspace has been that product for us. We are also part of a larger system of colleges/universities, of which there's about 32 of them, whom all use Brightspace. It is used throughout our entire institution, and we've even found uses for it beyond the primary purpose we purchased it for. We have found it to be a tremendously useful tool in delivering our regular credit-based courses through (online, face-to-face, hybrid, etc.), facilitate customized training, use for departmental collaboration, a communication tool for our whole institution (including with our students), and more. Without Brightspace, we would likely need multiple other software contracts and tools to effectively be able to do all the things we end up using it for. It may be one of our most costly software contracts that we have, but because it does so much for our organization, we would have to spend a lot more and be less efficient without it.

Pros

  • Provide an online platform for education/training.
  • Serve as a institution-wide communication channel.
  • Allow for customization to institutional needs.

Cons

  • Consistency across the platform.
  • May take time to customize to best fit institutional needs.

Likelihood to Recommend

If you're an educational institution (K-12, Higher Ed, etc.), this is an amazing tool, and it will provide you all the functionality to support anything you may want and need it to do.

If you are looking at Brightspace as a tool for corporate training, I'm not sure exactly how good or bad it will be for you. My guess would be that it likely depends on your organization's size. Along that line, what I can speak to is how we use it for our customized training and in-house professional development/training, and it works fantastically for that. While we primarily use it for normal higher ed coursework, we regularly do training and professional development for all of our employees and I manage those along with our HR department. Because we use it for many other things as well, all of our employees are familiar with the product, which makes our trainings go that much smoother and makes my job that much easier.
JB
John Bayerl
Director of Teaching Excellence in Information Technology at Minnesota State College Southeast (Higher Education, 201-500 employees)
Vetted Review
D2L Brightspace
8 years of experience
View profile

Brightspace LMS Review

Rating: 9 out of 10
Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Brightspace is a learning management system used by the college in all aspects of managing student learning, student achievement, student communication and teacher training.

Pros

  • Creating and organizing assignments
  • Able to upload files of all types
  • Manage calendar
  • Student reminders of work due via built in calendar

Cons

  • Editing assignments: too many steps, can be more streamlined
  • Courses are presented the same for instructors and learners. Instructors have to use 'student view' to see course from learners' point of view. Must click a button to deactivate
  • Using the built in course management system to create modules can be challenging

Likelihood to Recommend

Even though [Brightspace] has some cons the pros outweigh the cons. I would recommend this to a colleague.
AA
Ai Ashe
Instructor at The Art Institute of Virginia Beach (Higher Education, 1001-5000 employees)
Vetted Review
D2L Brightspace
3 years of experience
View profile

A bright, flexible learning management system

Rating: 8 out of 10
Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Brightspace is used throughout the organization with the exception of a few smaller departments. The LMS allows our instructors, employees, and students to access courses from their personal and work machines. The platform supports our traditional, hybrid, and online courses. With Brightspace, we are able to not only provide traditional slideshows and documents online for students to access, but we can also embed other technologies such as the Google Suite and the Adobe Cloud for further enhanced learning. The platform works on mobile and traditional machines as it allows developers to provide scalable resources and resources specific to each platform. I have used the service to provide three traditional in-person courses to students over the past year as well as one intensive online course. Materials are easily accessible and managing the platform becomes straightforward after a brief learning curve.

Pros

  • Allowing users to embed content links from YouTube or Google Drive enables learners to experience a richer lesson.
  • Providing a powerful editor that allows developers to also include content from Adobe Stock as well as textbook publishers and cloud storage companies gives more power and creative ability to instructors.
  • Providing scaling for mobile and traditional computer systems ensures students will not have issues on the go.
  • The customization of home pages and groups enable courses to be used for small training sessions with breakout groups, large courses with separate sections, and even just more engaging courses that present themed icons and logos.

Cons

  • The user interface for students is clunky, and it can be difficult to access courses once several have been registered, let alone once a student is inside of a course and has to navigate the content pages.
  • The instructor's interface is also difficult as courses are presented in the same fashion as they are for learners which means instructors who have taught many courses will need to dig through lists in order to find their current courses. The tools to add content to a course or design a course's appearance, while powerful, are confusing and should at least be supplemented with a detailed help guide and video series.
  • Gradebooks work for traditional courses; however, in gradeless or workshop settings, they are difficult to use. I have used text-based grades in lieu of numerical options, but I would still like to be able to revise or implement numerical grades in the final grade column as well. This is important for systems that do not use grades but are contract-based as the text fields may say "A" or "C", but the final numerical value may still be 0.
  • Certain content elements are missing from the platform, such as the ability to easily delete several items in a batch, or the ability to show and hide large and small elements at the click of a button without diving into menus. When one reuses a course, there is a high level of time involved in showing only the key elements and deleting unnecessary content which could be simplified.

Likelihood to Recommend

Brightspace can be a great platform for institutions looking for a multi-platform solution that works with standard cloud technologies and can provide a beautiful experience. The LMS can work well for online-only courses as sections can be segmented from each other inside of the same course, and grading can be automated depending on the scheme being implemented. Experienced instructors can still create useful workshops and courses with this tool, but it can be frustrating for newcomers or those used to other "plug-and-play" or "drag-and-drop" options. I would recommend trying the tool out and making some demonstration courses in which you are a student and learner in order to feel how it works and compares to other options on the market. Brightspace is definitely powerful and can provide a good experience once all stakeholders adjust to its handling.
VU
Verified User
Professional in Professional Services (Higher Education company, 10,001+ employees)
Vetted Review
D2L Brightspace
1 year of experience

Love it!

Rating: 9 out of 10
Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Brightspace for all of our classes. All students have access to Brightspace in order to access their classes, and many of the staff and faculty have access to either teach classes, keep up with calendars, or in my case, keep up with all of the syllabi and grades.

Pros

  • I love that Brightspace is easy to use. Everything is pretty self-explanatory.
  • Although I am not in the IT department, it seems like they are able to customize Brightspace quite a bit to meet the school's and instructors' needs.

Cons

  • The only con that I can think of right now is that Brightspace does not integrate with our SIS. However, I believe this is an issue with our SIS. I have been told that it can be done, but we are still looking into making that happen.

Likelihood to Recommend

Brightspace is great for any school that offers online or blended courses, or any school that requires students to complete assignments online.
VU
Verified User
Professional (Education Management company, 11-50 employees)
Vetted Review
D2L Brightspace
2 years of experience

A robust yet simple to use LMS - Brightspace

Rating: 8 out of 10
Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We utilize Brightspace across our institution to serve as the single unified platform for teaching and learning. Our institution is robust in the fact that it has many different locations and modalities. Online, face-to-face, hybrid and self-paced are all types of education we provide. Brightspace provides an avenue to connect all of our students and instructors. Instructors are asked to utilize Brightspace for all of their courses. Sometimes this means something simple, like uploading the syllabus -- but other courses (especially online) are built entirely into Brightspace. Students complete activities in Brightspace, and instructors evaluate and assess in Brightspace.

Pros

  • Robust -- Brightspace can be as simple or as complex as you'd like. There are so many different configurations you can set up when implementing the product.
  • Intuitive for students -- Especially for learners, Brightspace is very simple to use and doesn't take much training for students to jump in and get started.
  • Dependable -- Brightspace (at least so far) has been very dependable for our users. In our multiple years of using the product, it has only gone down for a very minimal time.

Cons

  • The grade book can be very challenging to set up for instructors.
  • The current method of implementing learning outcomes is tedious. Although, this is being worked on.

Likelihood to Recommend

Brightspace works very well in higher education. I believe they are making a lot of strides toward the K-12 area as well. I am not as familiar with the business case, but from what I have seen in the administration of the product, it can scale and be configured in many different ways.
VU
Verified User
Administrator in Information Technology (Higher Education company, 201-500 employees)
Vetted Review
D2L Brightspace
4 years of experience

Brightspace - A Way to Integrate More Content to your Courses

Rating: 9 out of 10
Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Brightspace is used as the virtual or online component to classes, either as a blended class, as an extra form of communication to students, or as a completely online course. It's also used college-wide as a way for employees to remain up-to-date on different HR topics. It's very organized and, I believe, user-friendly. I've used it in the capacity as a student, as an employee, and have helped professors use it to create content for their students.

Pros

  • It's very organized. From the moment you open it, you can see your courses taking up the majority of your screen. But you also have alerts for messages at the top, so that keeps you up-to-date on what you need to know right away, instead of digging through each course.
  • It's very clear and easy to find what you're looking for.
  • It's a great way to add content to a class, even if it is already a face-to-face course. You can use it to communicate with students, to allow them to see their grades as the semester is going on, or to give them supplemental information.

Cons

  • If there was a way they could integrate the student's/professor's campus emails, that would be fantastic.
  • I could see a video chat feature to be helpful, especially for online students.
  • That's all I can think of for now, it's really pretty comprehensive and simple to use.

Likelihood to Recommend

It's great for 100% virtual courses. Discussion boards, quizzes, tests, supplemental material, all easy to access and use.
But I think it's also great as an addition to a face-to-face course. I think, in this aspect, it is underutilized. It would be a great way to add content to a course, and a great place to direct students to go to if they have questions once they are outside of the classroom setting.
AC
Amanda Carpenter
Administrative Office Technician at Lebanon Campus of Harrisburg Area Community College (Higher Education, 1001-5000 employees)
Vetted Review
D2L Brightspace
7 years of experience
View profile

D2L does the job

Rating: 8 out of 10
Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

D2L is being used by the entire state university system. It has been, as I understand it, since 2010. The decision was made by the system regents to switch to Canvas by 2020, and I will be among the "early adopters". D2L is used as an option to support any and all courses taught anywhere in the UW system. Many instructors choose to use nothing. Some opt to use Blackboard, as that was what was used before D2L came on board, but without updates. I came in 2012 and have used D2L exclusively so far at this institution, Blackboard at others.

Pros

  • The grade book is very customizable. There is a learning curve, as there always is if something is flexible, but there are a lot of good options available for grading, displaying grades, and calculation of grades.
  • Adding course content of many types can easily be done using drag & drop or copy-paste. It is easy to retain stored content from semester to semester. Updating an item takes three clicks. It is easy to organize and reorganize content and allows sub-sections. It records whether individual students have opened material and how much time they spent using an item.
  • I like the flexibility of organizing the dropbox for student submissions. Deadlines in the dropbox or discussions automatically appear in the course calendar.
  • I like the range of quiz question options, in particular, the "multi-select" question type.

Cons

  • D2L should find a way to allow markup of student writing directly in the review panel of the dropbox. Blackboard and Canvas do this.
  • When you set the number of points an item is worth in the dropbox, it doesn't carry this value over into the grade book automatically, which means you have to be careful to enter the same information in two different interfaces.
  • The rubric function needs a wider range of options. It should be possible to upload rubrics from external files and make them usable within D2L.
  • The discussions are hard to reorganize. Grading discussions using a rubric is not possible inside D2L, as far as I know.
  • When using the Record audio function to provide student feedback, the audio quality is too poor to be used in many situations.

Likelihood to Recommend

From my experience, D2L is useful for most college courses, from those that are lecture-based to small, collaborative classes. There are individual features that require workarounds here and there, but with a couple of semesters' experience, it is entirely functional. I suppose there are people who find using any LMS challenging, and that would then include D2L, but otherwise, I can't say that D2L would not be appropriate for any institution of higher learning.
TC
Tom Carlson
Instructional Academic Staff at University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire (Higher Education, 501-1000 employees)
Vetted Review
D2L Brightspace
6 years of experience
View profile

Desire to Learn or Desire to suffer

Rating: 1 out of 10
Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

In my program, we have been using D2L since 2012. At the beginning our school was adapting it and it was quite buggy, then at the end of 2013 it got a lot better and became the go to system. However for whatever reason (I think business reasons and cost) D2L switched their servers and they claim that they are using a cloud based system. This switch happened in august of 2015 and since then all the wrong things started happening.

The file transfer speed (upload and download) went as low as %5 of what it should be. To make things worse, their server kicks you out when your upload or download is not done in 30 minutes. Their tech support after 7 months still does absolutely nothing. They practically ignore the existence of this issue. And worse than that many times my faculty and students reported issues such as file transfer termination, or when the transfer is done, the file is corrupt. This system is pretty much useless for us and our IT has told that D2L is not accepting the problem and they are blaming it on our ISP and web traffics. ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

Pros

  • It used to do well with grading.
  • It used to do well with file upload.
  • It used to do well with file download.
  • The attendance and feedback are ok.

Cons

  • They should go back to their previous server.
  • They should actually admit that they made a bad move and try to fix the issues.
  • Their tech support should stop blaming the user.

Likelihood to Recommend

Based on its current state I advise everyone to stay away from them.
RS
Ramin Shadmehr
Program Head at BCIT (Education Management, 1001-5000 employees)
Vetted Review
D2L Brightspace
4 years of experience
View profile

Lots of Bang for Your Buck

Rating: 8 out of 10
Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Desire2Learn is utilized by the entire campus as a learning management platform.

Pros

  • Extremely versatile; because we have a very diverse faculty, each with a particular work-flow, D2L is flexible enough to meet the needs of everyone.
  • The iPad grading application is a godsend! I can grade offline, and the second it's linked with WiFi it will upload the grades. Since I'm an English professor, this is incredibly useful.
  • The ability to copy elements from one shell to another is helpful when you have multiple sections of the same class.

Cons

  • The versatility is also its drawback. There are SO many different ways to do the same thing, that learning the system is overwhelming.
  • Creating quizzes is not user friendly at all. It takes an inordinate amount of time.
  • The shell itself is not customizable. It's difficult to draw student's attention because it is not at all visually appealing.

Likelihood to Recommend

I think the college has implemented D2L very well, which is why it is baffling to me that more professors aren't using it. I think enough professors are using it that the college isn't going to abandon the service any time soon, but it seems to me like I am in a minority.
LA
Laura Abercrombie
Adjunct English Professor at Polk State College (Higher Education, 201-500 employees)
Vetted Review
D2L Brightspace
3 years of experience
View profile