In 2021, Pima Community College was one of the first colleges nationally to host an educator conference that repurposed D2L Brightspace as a conference management solution. With over 200 educators attending the 2021 PimaOnline Educators Conference (POEC), Pima demonstrated that D2L Brightspace can effectively manage dynamic learning conferences that enable educators to participate in meaningful, interactive learning opportunities that harness, and model, the power of Brightspace for supporting synchronous and asynchronous learning.

The Coaching to Complete program at Sinclair Community College (Dayton, Ohio) leverages Brightspace and its tools with dynamic collaboration between faculty and Success Coaches to support student success in eLearning courses. Coaching to Complete paved the way for an innovative success model of in-course support at a much-needed time during the transition to all online learning due to the pandemic. Outcomes included participating courses averaging a 5% higher passing grade rate versus non-participating courses, a 90% interaction rate between Success Coaches and students through different Brightspace channels, a majority of students indicating the Success Coach helped them with motivation and encouragement, meeting assignment deadlines, finding resources for help, and getting in better contact with their instructors. Since its inception, more than 6,400 students, 50 faculty, and 300 online courses have taken part in Coaching to Complete.

Purdue University’s Learning Online 101 was developed as a self-paced resource to help students adapt to a dynamic learning environment due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Learning Online 101 brought together a range of curated materials to help students connect with essential resources and identify the best practices to aid in their individual learning needs. This course was designed to address common online challenges by providing students with the skills, resources, and confidence to learn and engage with course elements housed in Brightspace. To date, over 57,000 individuals have been enrolled in this course. The course evaluation survey (n=3,000 responses) revealed high levels of engagement, where 96.1% visited most content topics and an average of 95.5% found the content useful across all four modules. Learners also reported this course as an excellent introduction to learning and engaging with online courses at Purdue, which made learners feel more prepared and less anxious.

With the uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic, when educational institutions and training centers are opting for online delivery methods, evaluating the efficiency of training programs is critical to ensure their success. The Kirkpatrick model is the standard of leveraging and measuring training success, and this submission presents the assessment of the Common Safety Orientation (CSO) course at Energy Safety Canada (ESC) that is hosted on Brightspace. The first two levels (reaction and learning) of the Kirkpatrick model are useful tools to drive continuous improvement in student experience and learning outcomes. Course quizzes and exit surveys built into Brightspace are used to measure student satisfaction and to translate the success of the training programs at Energy Safety Canada, which drive safe work practices across the Energy Industry.