Brightspace Reviews

Pros

Have used Brighspace as a student and as a faculty. As long as the faculty sets it up well it is exceedingly easy to navigate. The features really benefit the educational experience.

Cons

Setting up the individual course takes time. I felt like I needed to be a coder to actually use to features. We have two full time hired staff to help keep the online classes in this running. Also, the email is ridiculously complicated.

Pros

I like how it's easy for students to use. Students are able to watch seminars, communicate with instructors, and access stored documents and assignments.

Cons

I don't like how the system crashes. There's been a few times where D2L has been down due to technical issues.

Pros

I loved how the dashboard showed me the classes I was taking in an easy display.

Cons

I wish there was more information when I first logged in about who my professor was.

Pros

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).

Cons

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.

Pros

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!

Cons

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.

Pros

I like the ability to stay on top of my assignments in classes and know what is to be expected throughout the semester. It is easy to see what is due week by week under the course content. I think the site is set up fairly well.

Cons

I sometimes have trouble with the discussions section where I need to manually press that I have read another members posts, I wish it appeared automatically. It also took a bit to be able to navigate the site but after becoming familiar I have had no problems.

Pros

This software provides the bare minimum of what would be required from the software. It allows teachers to post assignments adequately (no better than any other system I have seen in class).

Cons

The system is not intuitive and takes a while to locate various functions. The grading component is awful on the student end. Overall grades cannot be seen by the student. Should a student wish to know his or her overall grade they must manually calculate it. This on its own is still a problem since Brightspace doesn't even show the point value of each grade, just the percentage. This program is only useful for students to know their grades a small period of time before they would be handed back in class.

Pros

Perhaps it is because we switched from Merlin's Blackboard Learning platform (which was terrible), but Brightspace has a much cleaner interface. The simplifying of certain aspects is also a plus, not to mention the ease of changing pages as a teacher instead of having to go into the actual coding.

Cons

Brightspace is new to me, so I am still sorting out some of the glitches and variations on the Blackboard Learn platform that we used to use.

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.

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.

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.

Pros

A helpful platform for managing online courses. I especially like the ability for professors to create a checklist for each module.

Cons

Some of the email messaging features are a little clunky.

Pros

It’s so easy to use and has so many tools to help you to be successful and keep track of what you are doing.

Cons

I personally don’t find any flaws with this software. I truly enjoy it and it is easy to use.

Pros

D2L is easy to use. I appreciate this software for schooling purposes.

Cons

The organization of D2L can be a little tricky. Overall the quality of it is great!

Pros

The LMS is very robust and flexible. It is also reliable.

Cons

The interface is often not intuitive. Often multiple clicks are needed to find an important setting in an assessment.

The communications piece ("intelligent agents") which allows the faculty to send automated emails when a student meets certain criteria (for example, sending a note to the student if they haven't logged into the course in 5 days) is quite limited and lacking in "intelligence."

Pros

I love how everything is so easy to find. You can get announcements from your professor and have everything you need for your assignments all in the same place. They also have the app where I can do my assignments on my cell phone.

Cons

I love everything about it. There is nothing that I don't like about Brightspace. I haven't had any problems with it.

Pros

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

Cons

None that I have seen yet.

Pros

This product is very user-friendly and very customizable. It's very intuitive to use. It has a great look and feel. They are always asking customers what we need to do our jobs better. Monthly updates come out to fix issues, create new tools, or revamp old tools.

Cons

This product comes with a nice price tag, but you pay for what to get. Most definitely worth the price.

Pros

The support team is very fast in replying to any issues that may arise. Additionally they provide many webinars and conferences that help the users to create a network and exchange knowledge.

Cons

The not so intuitive construction of the LMS. Some navigation buttons can be confusing. One of the drawbacks is that it doesn't keep preferences like restrictions as default and you have to push lots of buttons or tick many boxes for each course.

Pros

It has improved some things, like being able to cut and paste into discussions.

Cons

1. The layout is not clear to students. Many have problems locating things in the Content because they don't understand the structure.

2.When I log in as a student and go to discussions, even when I have "grid view" and "threaded" selected, I don't really see a thread structure, just a list of messages. Since I teach literature, discussion is essential to the course, but this makes it almost impossible to use really well.

3. When I'm logged in as myself and switch to "student" view, I don't see what the students see. I have to log out and log in as a different user to see that.

4.The grading and attendance features are not flexible and don't allow me to keep the kinds of records I need.

5. The email is much too limited.

6. When I add a new topic to a module, I can't reorder the list of topics, but have to move the new one up one topic at a time. This takes a very long time.

Pros

I love that all the course information can be located in one place. The ability to add videos and links to helpful information is important as we look for ways to make learning more accesible to students.

Cons

I have been using D2L Brightspace for several years and haven't found anything I don't like.

Pros

Was fairly simple to use and navigate it

Cons

Some of the features were clunky even though manageable

Pros

I like the ability to post supplemental instruction material for the students.

Cons

There's conflicting information regarding mail quota on the Home page vs individual course pages.

Pros

I like the support, and little training is needed for basic application.

Cons

It's not easy to change the order of content once published.

Pros

It had a lot of features and everything was very organized. I liked that all my classes were covered and I could see it clearly from the home page.

Cons

It took a bit for me to now how to work the program. It was also a huge change from our previous program.