D2L was recently a part of the 2025 Learning Impact Europe conference. The aim of the event was to explore the latest updates and trends in EdTech to continue to build toward a trusted digital learning ecosystem in the higher education space.
Between our own staff and a D2L customer, we hosted three sessions at the event that covered AI, collaboration between institutions and the impact of open standards on learning:
- Responsible AI in Practice: Empowering Educators, Protecting Learners
- Freedom of Movement in Education: Unlocking the Power to Collaborate
- Building for Flexibility: HOGENT’s Interoperable Learning Architecture
In this blog post, we’ll provide the highlights from each session.
Responsible AI in Practice: Empowering Educators, Protecting Learners
In the first session, Linda Feng, vice president of product at D2L, discussed how it’s critical to innovate responsibly and keep people at the center of change as AI rapidly reshapes education. She highlighted the importance of using AI responsibly, which can mean abiding by a certain set of principles—like those used at D2L—which include:
- transparency
- privacy
- accountability
- security
- bias
- non-discrimination
Feng also spoke to the need for humans to always have an edge over AI and be in the loop when its being used. We also need to be thinking of the bigger picture, said Feng, making sure people aren’t getting lost in the digital divide and that access to AI is equitable.
During the session the audience was polled on three questions to gauge their perspective on the use of AI:
| Which ethical principle do you believe is most critical when designing AI for education? | |
|---|---|
| Transparency | 4 |
| Privacy | 3 |
| Fairness | 1 |
| Accountability | 1 |
| All of the above | 10 |
| What features would most empower educators when using AI-enabled tools? | |
|---|---|
| Full control over AI-generated content | 2 |
| Ability to override AI decisions | 4 |
| Clear visibility into how AI works | 5 |
| Tool to support learner agency | 6 |
| I’m not sure yet | 1 |
| How important are open standards for scaling AI solutions across institutions? | |
|---|---|
| Essential for interoperability and trust | 15 |
| Not sure what open standards are | 1 |
| Helpful but not mandatory | 2 |
| Not important in my context | 0 |
One of the biggest risks AI poses is human complacency, limiting the amount of critical thinking and reflection expected of learners and users of AI. The Generative AI Data Rubric from 1EdTech was highlighted as a way to build transparency and ethical use of AI, which can be used to set guidelines for higher education providers. The rubric includes expectations for:
- alerts when GenAI is in use
- options to opt in/out
- information about the use of AI in the data privacy policy
- identification of data sources
- notification if the AI is internal or a third-party tool and associated data privacy and ownership concerns
As institutions navigate this evolving landscape, keeping human agency and ethical design at the forefront will be essential to building trust and driving meaningful innovation in education.
Freedom of Movement in Education: Unlocking the Power to Collaborate
The next workshop, hosted by Louise Plunkett, international product strategy director at D2L, and Kelsea Walsh, sustainability lead at D2L, explored how educators can use interoperability standards-based technology to extend their impact beyond their own institutions. Attendees learned how these tools can help reach a wider network of learners, reduce administrative burdens through networked collaboration and support professional associations.
A key theme was enhancing student mobility—giving learners greater access to diverse courses and opportunities across institutions, ultimately broadening the scope and scale of education.
The workshop took participants through a process of launching from an external learning platform into a Brightspace course with a single connected link. No need to create accounts and manage more passwords and no risk of multiple copies of learning materials with no true version control. The workshop demonstrated this collaboration being achieved through Brightspace course publisher, which is registered as a tool provider through 1EdTech, in addition to Brightspace being certified as LTI Advantage Complete as a platform allowing external learning tools to work in Brightspace.
This tool provides benefits for every user—from hosts and creators to administrators and learners—to more openly collaborate across institutions. It provides a simple integration for users to be able to publish a course, securely share access to external users instantly and send track results across both systems.
Building for Flexibility: HOGENT’s Interoperable Learning Architecture
This conference also saw a session hosted by one of our customers, HOGENT, on the topic of how open standards enable new approaches to design, deliver, assess and support learning. The session also provided a reflection on the evaluation model they used to choose a new LMS provider to help guide other institutions toward a sustainable and interoperable learning environment.
The speakers included Stefaan Vanbillemont, Functional Analyst EdTech at HOGENT University and Sven Vanpoucke, Software Developer at HOGENT University, who told the institution’s story of moving from legacy systems to a future-ready architecture by treating interoperability as a core design principle.
HOGENT began their journey toward a new LMS by developing a three-later growth model that includes:
- Core layer: A centralised and integrated foundation where all the other components are built.
- Flexible shell: Smaller components dedicated to one course, flow or education department.
- Sandboxes: A decentralised and experimental space to test out new tech.
To help determine its digital learning approach HOGENT divided their search for an LMS into five component groups, which included:
- Data and management
- Portal functionality
- Basic components (online courses, documents, discussions, announcements)
- DNA components (closely related to the organisation and specific software HOGENT needs)
- Expert components (Panopto or Ans—something they could not build themselves)
A SWOT analysis was then conducted to find the best building blocks for their next digital learning approach. This data was then used to complete an extensive tender process to choose their next LMS provider and map out a digital infrastructure capable of supporting hybrid learning, institutional data integration and evolving pedagogical needs.
The result for HOGENT was a flexible yet stable architecture designed for resilience, collaboration and innovation—without sacrificing security, scalability or governance.
Explore D2L Brightspace in action today.
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