Modern States Education Alliance is a non-profit that helps anyone, anywhere earn free, flexible college credit. Since it was founded eight years ago, Modern States has given away over 10,000 years of free college.
While transitioning from their legacy learning management system (LMS) to D2L Brightspace, a need was uncovered for revising its course catalog and rebuilding content. D2L’s Learning Services team stepped in to help breathe new life into their courses.
Some of the updates Modern States was able to implement included:
- Reimagining the learner journey: Conducted end-to-end analysis—from enrollment to exam completion—to identify friction points and improve continuity through user testing, onboarding refinements and clearer communication touchpoints.
- Creating a cohesive design framework: Developed a Program Design Guide to standardize course structure, learning outcomes, assessments and accessibility aligned with UDL best practices.
- Building scalable tools and processes: Introduced shared templates and workflows for consistent content creation, streamlined module development and quality assurance across courses.
- Enhancing feedback and innovation: Redesigned surveys and integrated data systems to capture learner insights, while exploring AI-driven tools like tutorbots and adaptive nudges to personalize engagement.
A Small Team Looking for Support
When it came time to rebuild the courses, Modern State’s small-but-mighty team turned to D2L’s Learning Services team for their expertise and support.
“We’re a small team, so it was really important in working with Learning Services that we could structure the project so that course design and course development could happen in parallel to all of the other things we’re doing as an organization,” said Jefferson Pestronk, Executive Director of Modern States.
Modern States was able to make the transition to Brightspace without learners losing access to courses or any progress they’d made. “It was setting the table for us to be able to revise and rebuild our courses,” explained Pestronk. “That had always been part of our ambition in making the jump.”
Pestronk and the Modern States team had conversations with the Learning Services team to understand what it would look like to rebuild the courses. They also discussed what benefits were available in Brightspace that Modern States wasn’t already utilizing, identifying several short and long-term improvements.
“Once we’d had those conversations, it just felt natural to work with D2L to actually rebuild those courses,” he said.
“Our content is now the only thing that learners are focused on. They’re not distracted by all of the things that are surrounding the courses on Brightspace,” he explained. “Since we’ve come over to Brightspace, in the past year just from making some initial changes, our exam passage rate has gone up five percentage points. That’s thousands of additional students a year who are earning college credit for free and taking the next step on their journey.”
Since we’ve come over to Brightspace, in the past year just from making some initial changes, our exam passage rate has gone up five percentage points. That’s thousands of additional students a year who are earning college credit for free and taking the next step on their journey.Jefferson Pestronk Executive Director, Modern States
Incorporating AI
With AI being on everybody’s radar, Learning Services leveraged custom AI solutions and automated workflows to develop courses now hosted in Brightspace, streamlining Modern States’ content creation and delivery.
The first tool takes Modern States’ video lectures and wraps text-based summaries around each lecture, the units themselves and around the course at the highest level. This gives learners multiple exposures to the content.
“Learners are getting some context about how what they’re about to learn connects to things that they’ve learned before. They’re getting the content connected to ideas that are resonant to them or things that they know in their real life,” explained Pestronk. “The goal of that is really to provide a more compelling, connected, and relevant learner experience.”
D2L’s Learning Services team has also helped Modern States use AI tools to build broader question pools and banks for quizzes and final exams. These assessments are used to help Modern States determine if the learners are ready to take the College-Level Examination Program (CLEP) exam— a set of standardized tests offered by the College Board that let students earn college credit for knowledge they already have.
“Having better assessments help us know whether they’re ready but also help communicate to the learner whether they’re ready to take this test, is really essential,” said Pestronk. “AI is helping us build question banks faster. It’ll help us rebuild them more regularly, and it’ll help us ensure that we’re testing learners on the right things.”
Partnering With Learning Services
Pestronk and his colleagues can focus on their own work by trusting in the expertise of D2L’s Learning Services —including instructional, visual and learning experience design.
“[Learning Services] brings the expertise about what all of these things look like in Brightspace and how to realize all of the benefits that already exist that we might not be taking advantage of now,” he said.
“Our partnership with the Learning Services team lets us pay attention to what we need to in order to equip our learners to succeed,” said Pestronk. “The Learning Services team can focus on the expertise that they bring and build out and improve our courses as we move ahead.”
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