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Brightspace Update: The 'D2L Connection' event in Dublin

Last week, I went along to the ‘D2L Connection’ event, held over two days at University College Dublin. It was a great opportunity to speak to other institutions, as well as D2L themselves, about the latest developments in Brightspace.

It was good to confirm that, just over a year into using Brightspace at the University of Suffolk, we’re in a similar position to the institutions that adopted it not long before ourselves. As ever, D2L were keen to keep everyone in the loop about future developments to the learning platform, and provided plenty of opportunity for feedback.

Every session that I attended was useful, but there were a couple of highlights.

A course leader from University College Dublin gave an excellent session on how they had used rubrics effectively. When used well, this tool allows academic staff to provide high-quality feedback in a much more efficient way. We are already beginning to explore how we could best use the rubrics tool here at the University of Suffolk, but there’s plenty of untapped potential. Keep your eyes peeled over the next few months as it’s something that we’re likely to talk about.

Another session focussed on how to use Microsoft Power BI to take the data behind Brightspace and produce useful visualisations for others. Over time, we will be looking to develop the access that our Deans have to the data generated from within their schools.

Other sessions focussed on how to support good learning behaviours in students (via automated ‘nudging’ towards viewing feedback) and on how Brightspace was successfully implemented at other institutions.

All in all, it was a very successful event. D2L are proud of the way that they set out to ‘reach every learner’ and of how they see their relationship with clients as ‘partners before vendors’. If you’d like to be more involved with this, check out the Brightspace Community, where you’re able to ask and answer questions, as well as access the full range of support materials produced by D2L.

As mentioned towards the start of this post, we’re just over a year into using Brightspace as our online learning environment. We’re now moving into a phase where academic staff are beginning to explore some of the more advanced features offered by the platform, and some really exciting learning is taking shape.

As ever, contact us at learningservices@uos.ac.uk if you have any queries. You can book training for yourself or your team via https://libguides.uos.ac.uk/brightspace/training. And, crucially, if you’ve not had a go at our Brightspace Introductory CPD course for staff, get cracking!

Meanwhile, I'm still on Twitter, posting updates about Brightspace developments: @OllyUoS

Olly Fayers

Digital Learning Designer