Brightspace Reviews

Technological advances in modern platforms seek, in one way or another, to redefine the concept of human learning. That is why platforms like Brightspace seek not only to manage all the most important aspects of educational management, ranging from the earliest ages to the most advanced students of high school, changing with them and adapting to their cognitive and emotional needs, accompanying them,...

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Platforms such as Brightspace must have control or ability to configure pop-up windows, as well as other tools that must adapt to the changing requirements of users. The platform must be more managed so that it can reach more places and be more recommended.

Brightspace is very intuitive; users can jump into the LMS and figure out what they need to do with little to no instructions. I like the power it gives admins to build in automation and customize how students work through the course. This is done via intelligent agents and release conditions. Brightspace just looks great. Is the most aesthetically pleasing LMS on the market as far as I have seen.

The platform seems more geared toward traditional schooling systems rather than asynchronous models at times. For example, there is no easy way for students to add their own due dates to assessments; they can only be added for the entire course, which does not work when students are all pacing differently. Brightspace for Parents is also not as strong as I would have expected. There seems to be limited features and out parents are just not really interested in using it.

What I like most about this product is the ease of navigating each feature of the product. There are quite a few features, all of them being outstanding and easy to use.

There seem to be quite a few bugs for us with this product. However, the product has been integrated going on two years, so there is bound to be some issues going forward.

Brightspace makes it easy to contact students in a class. I like the 'classlist' feature that lists all the students in a class and their university-related contact email. This simplifies either bulk-emailing students (as an instructor) and finding students to study with (as a student). It is also a secure site to centrally access all the information necessary for all my courses.

Brightspace provides multiple places to find the same things. This is confusing, especially when some assignments are loaded in a given course module but not in the 'Assignments' tab, or vice versa. There are multiple levels of redundancy that are not kept consistent throughout the interface, so it is often confusing to locate materials. Brightspace is also slow to load. Often, when moving between...

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Brightspace has tons of features and capabilities that teachers and students can use in learning! Through assignments with release conditions, video and audio recording for instructions and responses, homepage customization, and much more. There are few things that you are limited to with Brightspace.

Though there are many features in Brightspace, they can often be tedious and complicated to create and use. For example, creating tests/quizzes in brightspace is a very important tool for teachers to give formative assessments. The creation tool works, but takes many more steps and work when compared to other quiz creation tools, such as Google Forms. This applies to almost all features on Brightspace. When using this with younger students - Pre-K through 5th grade - that can take a toll on time and learning.

I've used a lot of similar products for educational reasons like Sakai, Blackboard, WebCT, Canvas and so on and one of the pros for me that Brightspace offers is that it's very clean looking compared to some of the above. I personally find it very organic and easy to use, but I've also been using similar programs since college. Still, I feel like the tutorials on Brightspacde and the layout of it...

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There's very few items I dislike, and they may just reflect me and my colleagues. Some of the cons are as follows: I have a lot of issues with the grade book that comes with this software. This seems to be an issue I share with my colleagues as well. Some of the grade book issues range from students not being able to view grades, even after I make them visible to them and the site showing a percentage...

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It’s extremely customizable, but no matter how each course might be built, there is a feeling of familiarity. I love the assessments, open ended plugins to embed for my faculty, user support, and the student experience. I really love the course builder. It’s an easy to use yet extremely effective tool.

I would say the fact that it is so customizable and open ended at first is daunting to faculty. However with proper training and support, my faculty have really excelled with the LMS.

I like the ability for there to be an online classroom and I like that it records the lectures. I like how the online classroom allows for screensharing and chatting also. I also like the look of the software; it doesn't look dated.

At this point, I have used several types of software like Brightspace as I have been in higher education for almost 7 years now as an undergraduate student and now, a graduate student. I think out of all those other software that I have used, Brightspace is the least intuitive to navigate. On the outset, I think the website looks clean and modern and it feels like a website that would be easy to navigate....

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-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.

-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.

The product has a clear layout and is easy to use. It is simple to navigate to the different sections as well as see any grades or announcements that have occurred. I like that it allows you to pin the most important classes you're focusing on. It also has a feature that reads announcements aloud to those who are visually impaired.

I do not receive notifications from Brightspace when grades are released or I have notifications/discussion responses. I wish there was a way to get these notifications so I don't have to check the website every day.

As an administrator at my previous employer, I appreciated the flexibility to change pretty much anything that I wanted in the system. The ability to change what things were called in the system were very nice. In the most recent version that I had used, Brightspace had taken steps to make some changes on how system settings were handled to update the interface. Previously, the interface of the DOME...

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I found that there were little things that Brightspace did not do well. For instance, workflows between different tools were very different based on the time that the original tool was designed. This led to user frustration and an increase of time training users on the common functions of the LMS. I also found that Brightspace tended to minimize small updates or fixes in order to focus on major updates. While major updates are important to survive in the field, sometimes known bugs would remain for years without a fix.

I love that I can take these classes outside of school. I am currently taking four classes on Brightspace (Sociology, Psychology, Spanish III Semesters 1 & 2) because I could not fit them into my schedule for my senior year. In addition, each class comes with a "90 Day Plan" in the course materials, which helps keep me on track; I try to do more per day than what is on the plan, as I'm trying to get...

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There's not much to complain about with this software. However, there is one issue I face on the daily with Brightspace. When working on a lesson, every now and again there will be a little box that pops up warning the user that if the session exceeds 30 minutes of inactivity, they will be logged out and will have to log back in again. I understand that it is set to do this for security reasons, but it is incredibly annoying when I'm taking notes on the lesson (which takes a decent amount of time) to have to be wary of the pop up appearing.

This app has everything students can use to avoid failing deadlines. It helps students to keep all critical data in one place, so it makes them more organized and aware of the education process. In Brightspace you can drag and drop all kind of files, as well as rearrange them, so new content can be easily seen. For teachers, it is also easy to create different types of tests or quizzes without spending much time or many resources. Brightspace is a well-known LMS and is used across our college as the learning management platform. It is used to distribute the different type of information, assignments tests, which makes the education process for both students and teachers more convenient.

This app lacks an intuitive interface. It is difficult to get used it, and it requires time to understand how to activate one feature or another. You need time to customize your interface; otherwise, it will be cluttered and even more complicated to use. There is an option to create discussions, but it is hard to organize them. It also would be nice to have a video chat option so that some lectures can be given online. Tech support can be improved, as it is not helpful and it usually blames users instead of fixing the problem.

Brightspace puts a lot of options at the user's disposal. It is a powerful, robust LMS that can be customized to fit a wide variety of preferences. As an admin and as an instructor, I really appreciated that the system did not lock me in to one way of doing things. I also really like how much, especially in recent years, the Brightspace development team seeks for input from its users (and provides great forums for sharing ideas for improvements).

Currently, Brightspace does not have a very robust way of setting up communications throughout the course. They use a feature called "intelligent agents" for sending notices to students when they meet certain criteria (for example, sending a particular note to a student when he is inactive in the course or performs particularly well on an assessment). This feature, however, lacks a good deal of "intelligence" and is pretty restricted in what it can do. I also feel that much of Brightspace is not particularly intuitive or streamlined. I'd like to see them improve on ease of use (without sacrificing power). A good example of this is the quiz feature where finding the exact page you need to get to in order to edit questions and grade values is a bit like a scavenger hunt.

I found this software very easy to use and pretty intuitive. It is fresh looking on the screen and I've not had any issues with the system not working as it should.

There are a few extra clicks that have to take place in some parts of the software to get back to where you want to be. That is somewhat annoying, but a minor issue.

I was recently employed by Texas Christian University as an adjunct professor, and this was the first time I had ever taught a class at a different university. I had never used Brightspace before and to be honest I was a little bit overwhelmed with it at first. There are so many different functions and options that at first glance it seems like it will take months to learn. However, I think their help...

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There is quite a bit of a learning curve to get to the more complex stuff, but after you learn it your productivity skyrockets.

I have loved using D2L for both my undergraduate and graduate studies. It has made submitting and keeping track of my assignments very easy. I love that it keeps everything on one easy to navigate website. I don't know what other options are out there, but I can't imagine anything being more user-friendly for students than this!

I did not realize course access expires when I first started using D2L for my school work. I didn't bother downloading a lot of my class materials to my computer beacuse I assumed it would always be there for me to reference. I looked back a year or two later and saw that my classes had disappeared. I understand why, but I really wish there was a counter or notification before course removal so I could download any content I wanted. This is probably something managable by the school, but it would be great if D2L would notify the students.

I really like the feature where you can open up quizzes or surveys for individual students. I use this when I have set a time/date for an item to close by and then students give me a valid excuse, then I can open it back up for them for whatever length of time I choose for them to complete the assignment. I also like that it is easy for a skilled user to navigate.

Even though I know how to navigate through the online set up now, it is sometimes troublesome for my students because there are just so many different options and different ways to navigate to the same thing. I usually have to do a short run through on how to use the software before the class begins and then I always have those that reach out with numerous questions regarding how to find something. This too has to do with the laziness of some students since I had no problem teaching myself how to use it.

Numerous design and layout options Embedded templates for rubrics and assignments

Some functionality is not intuitive in nature

BrightSpace includes all of the typical features of any LMS. However, D2L has improved the platform over time and has made the system more intuitive and user friendly. I also use CourseDen (the higher ed version of BrightSpace) for my college courses and the features are essentially the same with a few differences. However, the two platforms are enough alike that, once you know one system, learning to use the other one is a cinch. The features allow for very specific customization of assessments, discussions, and other features. I have built my own courses within the LMS, so I am familiar with a majority of the features and capabilities of the LMS.

No cons were added to this review

D2L is the most organized and functional software for universities to use. Students have one place to access all their courses and find all information they need. Using d2L, professors post all the content from their course and organize it however they want. Quizzes, discussions, and assignment drop boxes are found on D2L as well. D2L provides easy online accessibility for both teachers and students, making going to school a much easier task.

The due dates for assignments get confusing, not sure if thats a user error via professors, but they always seem to have to email student to say they don't know how to change the due date for certain assignments.

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.

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.

Has addressed many prior user problems experienced with D2L Well-ordered, clean user interface Easy to design different courses, quizzes, and tests with minimal investment of time. Excellent grading features that calculate percentages easily. Can easily switch from teacher view to student view to check the layout and identify problems before finalizing content.

Some of the menus are not intuitive. ie) I had trouble figuring out how to include deadline dates for assignments after which the software would no longer accept submissions. UI interface is too spread out- it doesn't make efficient use of space on small screen tablets.

The simplicity of navigation is amazing. I have to navigate through multiple courses within Brightspace, and it's very well organized and categorized. Which makes school all the easier. There is never any confusion regarding what I am trying to find, and how to find it.

The only negative thing I can say about Brightspace is the inability to access previous courses and work submitted within the courses. With that being said, I believe that is a school-based setting, and not a fault of Brightspace.

I enjoyed the formatting and how easy to use brightspace was compared to the previous software my university used. It made tracking grades and all of the content my teacher posted so much easier to follow. It also shows how your grades were compared to other students and allows you to track your own performance. When I was a TA, it was also really easy to post news items, enter grades and insert comments on students' papers. Easy to understand for all users!

It can be difficult to operate on mobile devices - there are less buttons to navigate the pages but it's not impossible to use.