Brightspace for LMS Admins | Higher Education
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Floor of the scene
The full scene window pane, with images to be added overtop Clock that sits on the wall Clock's hour hand, to be moved for each scene Clock's minute hand, to be moved for each scene
Morning sky scene with the sun just starting to rise Scene 1 environment including a counter with a cat and coffee on top of it, as well as a black dog. Illustration of Monica waving on the screen

A day-in-the-life of Monica – an LMS Admin at a College

She wants to make sure that the LMS is set up to support the faculty at her college in helping the learners reach their potential. Her top priorities are:

  • Providing an LMS that helps faculty be more efficient and impactful.
  • Support the students, which are increasingly becoming more diverpse.
  • Scale things effectively to save both time and money for her college.

Monica has a big task and lots of stakeholders. Let’s look at her day, and how she uses the Brightspace platform to help achieve these goals.

Keep scrolling to continue through Monica’s day…

Sun starting to come up behind buildings Scene environment with a computer monitor, Laptop, and a few plants sitting on a desk Monica and her co-worker chatting about accessibility Computer screen image with the Accessibility Checker within Brightspace

First thing: Make learning accessible for everyone

Providing an equal opportunity for learning is extremely important for the college. Monica’s supervisor wants to know what is in place today to give everyone a fair opportunity to learn.

  • Monica shows the accessibility checker that is built right into Brightspace. The accessibility checker built into the HTML editor in Brightspace assists in creating standards-compliant HTML for content, quizzing and discussions.
  • She then shows content templates created by the college to help every item that they author in Brightspace be accessible and work on every device by default – as well as be engaging.
  • Brightspace offers creative ways for instructors to provide learning in multiple modes and supports learners with multiple ways of engaging and expressing to reach their potential.
  • She shares that Brightspace meets Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 Level AA standards and complies with Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act, 1973.

After Monica shows her supervisor these features her supervisor suggests she record her demonstration and send an email to faculty letting them know about these features and how they can employ them.

Skyline of a city with the sun raising Monica's 2 co-workers waiting at a desk with 3 laptops and 3 coffee cups on it Monica with a clipboard in her hand ready to chat with her co-workers about students and faculty getting the support they need.

Late-morning meeting: Make sure students and faculty get the support they need

During a staff meeting, Monica proposes some new resources that will really make a difference in both student and faculty happiness, as well as help them reduce costs.

  • D2L offers end-user support that students and faculty can leverage if they need support using the LMS. This will not only provide 24 access so that people get the support exactly when they need it but is significantly less expensive than setting up this support system internally.
  • Additionally, they can get subscription training which offers unlimited access to on-demand and live virtual Brightspace training for instructors and administrators. This training solution helps scale the rollout of Brightspace and keep faculty up-to-date with the latest improvements.
From the outside looking into the office with 2 desks visible outside scene with a bench and a tree Monica sitting on the bench while eating a wrap and looking at her cellphone

Noon: Enjoy lunch and do some professional development

Monica is always looking to improve. During lunch she spends her time in the Brightspace Community online and reviews the feedback she received on creating groups in Virtual Classrooms.

City skyline with the sun just past noon hour Scene environment with a computer monitor, Laptop, and a few plants sitting on a desk Monica throwing some duplicate systems into the trash can Screenshot of D2L | Brightspace with the same icons as the duplicate systems that Monica is throwing out

Early-afternoon: Streamline systems

Now that her college has Brightspace, Monica can eliminate duplicate systems and get all learning onto one platform.

  • Right now the college has a few different systems for various tasks that are unwieldly, not integrated, and hard to manage. With Brightspace, there is no need to have separate systems for portfolios, professional development, content management, homework, discussion activities, or use social media for communications. They can reduce costs and frustration by doing all of this from Brightspace.
A plant sitting on the floor Monica holding up a To Do list with a pen to check items off

Mid-afternoon: Breeze through common tasks

Monica has a bit time to work through some of her to-do list. She loves how easy Brightspace makes all of these things to do.

  • Monica wants to remind all the faculty that grades are due next week. She can do this easily with an org-level announcement and set it to release to faculty only. She can even switch the role that she’s logged in so that she can see what the instructors and students will see and double check that she set it up correctly.
  • Next, she adds a custom link to the navbar for a new system that they’re using. This will make it easy for everyone to find.
  • After that she looks at her engagement dashboard to easily see which faculty have adopted the tools from Brightspace in their classes. She plans to reach out to those that haven’t adopted and give them more resources so that they’re comfortable to start using them.
City skyline with the sun starting to decent Scene environment with a computer monitor, Laptop, and a few plants sitting on a desk Monica with her headphones on working on her computer Screenshot of Monica working on a Health Science program within Brightspace

Afternoon: Work on the next big initiative

In the past, Monica used to spend a lot of time helping faculty use the system, responding to complaints, working on upgrades and dealing with outages. Since her college has implemented Brightspace, these frustrating parts of her job are no longer. She can sit down and focus on the big initiative to move the Health Science program online which is really going to move the needle.

City skyline with the sun starting to go down behind buildings Scene environment with a computer monitor, Laptop, and a few plants sitting on a desk Monica and 3 of her co-workers feeling empowered after using Quick Eval. Screenshot of Quick Eval within Brightspace

Late-afternoon: Empower faculty

Monica hears frequently from faculty about how overwhelmed they are. They are just as passionate about student success as she is, and she wants to make sure they have the tools they need to be successful.

  • Monica works with the Center for Teaching and Learning in helping them build a new portal with tips, tricks, and resources to help faculty learn about new tools and services. She’s excited to let them know about a new tool, Quick Eval, that will save them tons of time grading and make it easy to give students meaningful feedback.
  • Once faculty realize how much time Brightspace will save them in a day, they are quick to adopt it for their courses.
    • Brightspace acts much like an Administrative Assistant, helping instructors complete more administrative tasks in less time. They can do more easily and quickly—add content to courses, release assignments to specific students, provide meaningful feedback and communicate with students.
The moon and some stars in the sky, indicating nighttime Monica laying in bed with her laptop on her night stand The cat coming in and sitting on top of the laptop, and the black dog laying on the bed.

Bedtime – Enjoy peace of mind

Monica sleeps well at night.

  • Students and faculty can access Brightspace whenever they want to. With a better than 99.9% uptime Monica knows that everyone will be able to access the system anytime – without interrupting her downtime.
    • They can upload assignments, review course content as they study, or plan ahead by looking at their schedule. All without Monica having to do anything.
  • She knows that is students’ data is secure and protected. With industry-leading security and privacy she never has to worry that her students are at risk.
    • D2L doesn’t just rely on Amazon Web Services. They have an impressive track record of security leadership. Data is encrypted both in transit and at rest. D2L leads the industry with ISO27001- and ISO27018-certification and are a member of the Cloud Security Alliance.
    • Privacy is not just about keeping data secure. With our encryption in transit, and at rest in our cloud – you own your data, and you control it. D2L is a leader in building software with privacy by design as a core principle, and supports GDPR, PIPEDA, and other privacy standards.

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