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Our AI Story

Built for the Work
You Actually Do

This hub is two things at once.

It’s D2L’s approach to AI and it’s a working resource, built for your role. With the number of questions about AI increasing and becoming more challenging, the answers you give matter. The guides, research, and frameworks here are organized around those questions, to deepen your own AI fluency and bring something concrete back to your team.

Start with our story. Stay for what helps shape yours.

See Our Approach
John Baker

The goal isn’t just to embrace technology—it’s to leverage technology to make the educational experience more human.”

John Baker,
Founder, President & CEO, D2L

The Why

Organizations Need AI Built for Learning

For three years, the conversation around AI in education has been stuck between two extremes. In one version, it fixes everything. In the other it ruins everything. The customers we work with have mostly stopped picking a side. Instead, they want to know which AI solutions are trusted, responsible and will help learners get more out of their learning journeys.

We’ve spent nearly 30 years building the infrastructure that institutions and companies need to make teaching and learning more engaging, personalized and accessible. When AI showed up, we decided not to bolt it on as a quick feature. We revisited the foundation of what we do, human-centered learning, and embedded AI into it.

That’s our approach to AI. We’ve been purposeful about how we started to build with AI. And we’ve focused on delivering AI-enabled learning experiences that are intentional, human-centered and proven to deliver results.

This isn’t a sales pitch. It’s a record of four pillars we are committed to, what we stand behind and the evidence we’re willing to be measured against.

40%*

of our new clients last year turned on AI capabilities alongside their platform before AI showed up anywhere in their RFP. The demand is running ahead of the paperwork.

*Based on internal D2L analysis

What “By Design” Means

Four Commitments Behind Every Learning Moment

01 · Learning Led by Design

We didn’t add AI to a platform. We designed learning, then made it intelligent.

D2L Lumi – D2L’s AI capabilities that are embedded within all D2L products – is built on learning science and works from the materials already in your course, so what it produces fits the way you teach. We start each feature by asking what the “learner” needs, not what the technology can do.

02 · Educator-Centered

The most powerful thing AI can do for educators isn’t doing their job — it’s giving them back the time to do it.

Nothing D2L Lumi drafts goes out until an educator reviews it. The aim is narrow: take the repetitive work off their plate so they can spend that time on students. We call it reclaimed capacity.

03 · Responsible & Trusted

In learning, trust isn’t a marketing claim — it’s operational.

D2L Lumi is grounded in the course context and content an institution governs. It operates within controlled environments subject to D2L’s security, privacy and data-handling standards. That makes its outputs easier to monitor and explain. In schools, it’s institution-guided and built to support the obligations you already carry, from FERPA and COPPA to PIPEDA and provincial FIPPA, and GDPR. For companies, it operates within enterprise governance.

04 · Proof Through Outcomes

Stop measuring AI by logins. Start measuring it by whether the learning was effective and learners achieved more.

Many organizations measure learning by activities, we focus on outcomes. Comprehensive learning analytics offer unmatched insights into the learning process to guide teaching strategies and learner success.

The People Behind The Position

Many Voices, One Conviction

Intelligent by Design

John Baker

Founder, President & CEO, D2L

Intelligent by Design
Embedded AI
AI strategy
Outcomes & ROI

We’ve spent over 25 years designing the learning experience, then built AI into it. After three decades of building this kind of software, I’m convinced technology only sticks when it fits the work people already do and it’s hard to think of work that is more human than teaching. So the question we kept coming back to isn’t what AI could do. It’s what a given learner needs to know and how we can be sure they get there. That’s what shapes the product, and it’s how I judge whether we got it right.

Learn More

The Human Work of Teaching

Dr. Cristi Ford

Chief Learning Officer, D2L

//person 1 //person 2 //computer //chairs The Human Work of Teaching
Educators & AI
Reclaimed Capacity
AI Skills & Literacies

For me, it’s a commitment to ensure AI is anchored in pedagogy, quality, and purposeful, human-centered design. AI should help reduce friction so that the time it returns goes to what matters most: the connection between educators and their learners. When we ran the research with Digital Promise, the educators we talked to weren’t looking to offload teaching. They wanted the busywork gone so they could put more into their students. One instructional designer called D2L Lumi a “gateway AI,” the first one her faculty trusted, mostly because it worked from their own course materials. I’ll also be honest about the limits. Reading student work is part of how teachers figure out what students are missing. That should stay human, and we say so plainly.

Learn More

Trusted by Design

Christian Pantel

Chief Product Officer, D2L

Trusted by Design
Trusted AI
Governance & Privacy
Bounded by Design

In learning, trust has to be operational, not a line in a brochure. D2L Lumi is grounded in the course context and content an institution governs, so educators can understand the basis for what it produces and remain in control of how it is used. That is a deliberate product decision. In our research, educators were far less likely to raise concerns about bias and inaccuracy with D2L Lumi than with general-purpose tools. You don’t earn that kind of trust with a press release. You build it, through the choices you make in the product, the evidence you provide, and the accountability you maintain over time.

Learn More

More customer proof

Sandy Rezendes

Head of Corporate Learning and Development, D2L

Proof Through Outcomes

When an L&D leader tells me AI saved their team time, my first question is: time toward what? Hours back aren’t the win — whether someone can do the job better the next morning is. At Colliers Project Leaders, one trainer now designs and runs learning for more than 800 staff and keeps pace with roughly ten new hires a week, capability that helps the business grow 15% a year. Dematic rebuilt onboarding from twelve months to eight weeks so engineers reach real proficiency sooner. That’s our whole conviction in corporate form: clear the busywork of building and tracking learning so L&D can spend its judgment on the skills a business actually runs on. A time-saved number that can’t name the capability it produced isn’t worth much — and I won’t pretend otherwise.

Learn More

The American College of Financial Services – Dr. Elizabeth Pearsall discusses how D2L Lumi is helping accelerate course design, reduce faculty workload and improve the content creation process.
Elizabeth Pearsall

Southeastern University – Justin Rose shares perspectives on human-centered AI adoption, balancing technology with authentic learning experiences and the role of AI in higher education.
Justin Rose

Purdue University – Jason Fish discusses the expected impact of D2L Lumi and Creator+ on course development, faculty workflows and student success.
Jason Fish

In Writing

What We Will – and Won’t – Do

Anyone can publish principles. Ours comes with specifics on how we live them.

Privacy by design

We will

We will build privacy and security into Brightspace from the start, across the full product lifecycle — development, operations and ongoing improvement.

We won’t

We won’t treat your learner’s data as ours to repurpose. Our systems are designed to operate in a controlled environment. In Brightspace, your institution is the controller and D2L is the processor, acting on your instructions.

Security & Privacy →

Independent certification

We will

We will prove our program against recognized global standards, not our own say-so — continuous ISO 27001 certification since 2014 (the first major LMS to earn it), plus ISO/IEC 27701, 27018 and 27017, SOC reports, CSA STAR, TX-RAMP, and joint 1EdTech certification.

We won’t

We won’t ask you to take security on trust.

Compliance & Certifications →

Layered safeguards

We will

We will protect your data with layered technical, administrative and operational controls — TLS-encrypted connections, unique user sessions, transaction and IP logging, configurable session timeouts, password policies, delegated authentication and logical separation of customer data.

We won’t

We won’t take access settings out of your hands; you control them. That includes the API. Every application that touches customer data through the Brightspace API needs a security key.

Security Best Practices →

The Receipts

We Don’t Just Say It
We Continue To Study It

Our narrative isn’t a slogan — it’s a research program. Four studies. Hundreds of institutions. Thousands of educators, leaders, and employers.

Resource

Time for Class 2026

The cheating panic doubled. The policy count multiplied. Data from 250+ institutions says both miss…

eBooks and Guides

AI Literacies in Practice

Eleven templates you can run Monday morning — from assignment authenticity audits to AI policy…

Where To Next

Believe It? Now Go Further

LEARN

Find your path

Role-based paths for faculty, instructional designers, and academic leaders — start where your campus actually is

FIND YOUR PATH

SEE

Browse the proof

Institutions measuring AI by outcomes, not logins. Their numbers in their own words.

Browse the proof

BELONG

Get involved

Role-based paths for faculty, instructional designers, and academic leaders — start where your campus actually is

Get involved