Explaining Brightspace, the University’s new Learning Management System
ALBANY, N.Y. (Aug. 29, 2023) — In May, UAlbany launched Brightspace as its online learning management platform for faculty and students, replacing Blackboard.
We caught up with Billie Franchini, the director of the Center for the Advancement of Teaching, Learning, and Online Education (CATLOE), to learn a little more about the new system.
“Our mission at CATLOE is to support effective teaching at the University, including helping faculty make the best use of educational technologies like Brightspace,” Franchini said. “We collaborate closely with ITS to help ensure that faculty have the tools and the support they need to help their students be successful.”
Who can use Brightspace?
All faculty and students have access to the Brightspace system.
Brightspace provides many ways for instructors to share information with students and to help them complete their course work. For example, instructors can use Brightspace to organize and share course content (such as readings or videos), make announcements, facilitate online discussions or groupwork, post assignments, give tests or quizzes, and post student grades.
Students can use Brightspace to access course content, turn in assignments, interact with their classmates in groups or discussions, take tests or quizzes, and keep track of their grades.
What are some of the best features of Brightspace?
We heard a lot of positive feedback about Brightspace features during the spring pilot and summer courses. Here are some of the things that stand out most:
- Students have many ways to stay aware of what’s happening in a course, including notifications and alerts. There are also many ways for professors to communicate with students, which means they can help students track their progress and their learning in courses.
- There is a standard navigation bar in all Brightspace courses, which means that students will have a more consistent experience of navigating across all their courses than they did in Blackboard.
- Brightspace is very committed to accessibility and provides many tools that help professors ensure that courses are accessible for all students.
- All students and professors will have access to support directly from Brightspace, 365 days a year, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. This includes chat with screenshare, email and phone access.
For students and faculty familiar with Blackboard, what are some of the most notable differences?
Users will immediately see a difference when they log into Brightspace the first time! It has a much simpler and cleaner look than our version of Blackboard did. Both students and professors have reported that they find it easier to navigate than Blackboard because the user interface feels more like other websites they use. Finally, because Brightspace is cloud-hosted, there will be no regularly scheduled maintenance outages as there used to be with Blackboard. This means that all users will have more predictable and consistent access to the system.
Why did the University decide to switch to Brightspace?
The Blackboard application we were using until Spring 2022 is being retired by the vendor as of December 2023, so we needed a new solution. SUNY statewide reviewed many learning management systems and selected Brightspace as the best option. They established a contract so that all SUNY campuses across New York could use the same learning management system.
We didn’t just rely on SUNY’s review: In spring 2021, we conducted our own survey of Blackboard users on the UAlbany campus. Some 882 students and 400 faculty responded to that survey. We used the findings to conduct our initial assessment, and found Brightspace has all the features that professors and students on our campus reported using most frequently.
Where should users go if they need help?
Any time you are logged into Brightspace, you can click on the blue “Get Help” button at the bottom right of the screen and connect with end user support by chat, email or phone. The Brightspace Resources for Students page also has links to several resources to help you learn how to use basic features in Brightspace.