Prairie Land Online Academy

Prairie Land Online Academy creates a supportive online learning hub for K-12 students in Alberta

Challenge

Creating engaging online learning for all

Prairie Land Online Academy (PLOA) is an Alberta public school, part of the Prairie Land Public School Division. PLOA teaches both Alberta resident students and out-of-province students, covering Grades 1 through 12 and delivering both full-time and supplemental learning. Its learners include rural students looking to avoid long daily bus rides, full-time online learners and students taking individual courses to get ahead or support their in-person education. The school focuses on fostering caring relationships through an engaging online community. 

“We want to create an atmosphere of inclusion and welcome for our students, whether that’s in a video call, on our website or within our learning management system [LMS],” says Brian Giesbricht, principal of PLOA. For PLOA, the sense of belonging is especially important because the school has no physical building.  

For years, PLOA was guided by the Division on educational technology choices. Following other schools in the authority, it was using Canvas as its LMS and Edsby to record attendance and send out final report cards. However, PLOA noticed that its platform was not fully accessible for younger students. 

“Canvas is geared toward higher education, and its elementary school platform felt like an add-on rather than being native to the LMS,” explains Giesbricht. “It wasn’t working so well for our elementary students and was a bit cumbersome.” 

The split was especially noticeable as students moved into higher grades, creating a less consistent experience across the school. PLOA wanted a platform that could maintain a familiar core structure from grade to grade while still adapting to different age groups and maturity levels.  

At the same time, the school aimed to introduce outcome-based assessment to complement traditional grading, provide greater flexibility for learning and teaching, and help students develop key interpersonal and problem-solving skills. It also wanted a more consistent experience across grade levels so students would not need to relearn different systems as they progressed through school. That consistency mattered for staff as well, since some teachers support learners across multiple grade bands. To enable growth, innovation and a more consistent learning environment, PLOA set out on an LMS modernization project. 

Solution

Unlocking personalized experiences 

PLOA made the strategic decision to move from Canvas to the D2L Brightspace platform. Key to the school’s choice was the customization enabled by D2L Brightspace. For PLOA, personalization was not just a design preference. It was central to creating connection and belonging in a fully online school environment. 

“As we don’t have a physical building, the LMS is our schoolhouse, and it has to represent what we stand for,” says Giesbricht. “The ability to personalize the class page in D2L Brightspace and have it say the student’s name on it or show our school colors and logos really gives that sense of belonging to the student and feels more like a brick-and-mortar classroom.” 

PLOA delivers synchronous learning for Grades 1 to 9 and both synchronous and asynchronous learning for Grades 10 to 12. Working closely with the D2L team to ensure smooth change management, PLOA transitioned its content to D2L Brightspace and supported teachers with adapting course pages to different age group needs. This gave the school a way to preserve a familiar overall structure across grades while still adjusting navigation, visuals and course design to suit different age groups and maturity levels. 

“It’s a huge job to transition from one LMS to the next, but thankfully, D2L provided a lot of support, and it went pretty much seamlessly,” confirms Giesbricht. Throughout the transition, PLOA worked with the D2L team on onboarding, professional development and implementation planning while also bringing over existing integrations with minimal disruption.

Involving parents and guardians

For PLOA, engaging parents and guardians is just as important as engaging students. In an online school, families are an active part of the learning team, especially for younger students who need support attending lessons, staying organized and having the materials they need to be successful. The school deployed the Brightspace Parent and Guardian application and set up weekly notifications to let parents know about upcoming deadlines, assignments and other announcements. With the Brightspace Pulse mobile application, parents and guardians can also check their child’s performance on the go, supporting stronger engagement. Because those automated notifications had only recently been turned on, the school sees current parent adoption as an early sign of growing engagement. 

“So far, about 10% of the parents are actively using D2L Brightspace, and we’re still trying to get a lot more buy-in with that,” comments Giesbricht. “Having that regular communication is a great thing and will help parents be more knowledgeable and aware of what’s going on.” For PLOA, that regular visibility is important because parent engagement helps reinforce connection, accountability and support in the home learning environment. 

Result

Building an online community hub

With the transition to the new LMS complete, PLOA has boosted consistency and streamlined content organization to better meet diverse student needs and promote stronger outcomes. The school has already received feedback from students and teachers that finding relevant content is now faster, visually clearer and requires less class time spent searching for materials. 

For elementary grade students in particular, it’s much easier to navigate the Brightspace platform than the legacy LMS. All the material is now organized in one place using sidebar menus, making it easier to jump to the right content. For older students, there is now a table of contents at the beginning of each course that gives a quick overview of modules and units to help keep track of progress. Meanwhile, the release conditions feature in Brightspace allows students taking asynchronous courses to progress at their own pace, which is particularly useful for learners using online courses as a supplement to in-person teaching. Together, these features help PLOA maintain a consistent learning experience across grade levels while still adapting course design to different learners and instructional models. 

“It’s nice to be able to customize for different cohorts,” says Giesbricht. “We can adjust to their maturity level. As they progress, they’re getting more access to grade reports, for example. But there’s still a fundamental consistency that means that as students move through our school, they’re not having to constantly learn how to use new platforms.” The school has also introduced shared course elements across classes so students encounter a familiar starting point and orientation no matter which course they enter. 

For teachers, streamlined workflows in D2L Brightspace leave more time to focus on teaching instead of searching for resources. The PLOA administration team has noted that teachers are now uploading more materials and organizing them more clearly, creating better support for students outside of synchronous learning. Moreover, as teachers grow more comfortable with D2L Brightspace, they are trying new features—for example, some have started incorporating video and audio assessments into their courses.  

“With Canvas, some of the teachers were less structured with their materials and students weren’t necessarily aware of how to find what they were looking for,” recalls Giesbricht. “But in Brightspace, teachers are making use of the widgets to stay organized. We can even switch user roles to see how a page looks from a student’s perspective and ensure they have access to everything they need.” That ability to preview courses from a student perspective has also helped staff ensure learners can easily access the resources and tools they need. 

The flexibility of D2L Brightspace has enabled PLOA to integrate an outcome-based pedagogical approach, and the school is now expanding toward more ways to record student development. Notably, the school is rolling out the portfolios feature in Brightspace, creating a repository that will help showcase student achievements outside of traditional grades. For PLOA, portfolios represent a new way to strengthen the connection between home and school by giving families more visibility into student growth, creativity and achievement. 

“When my son was in preschool, we’d get a lot of drawings and other crafts he did there,” says Giesbricht. “I think it’s really important for parents to feel personally involved like that. The online portfolio will give them the opportunity to have that experience, as well as a reason to go into the system and check on their child’s homework and assignments.” 

Looking to the future, PLOA is working with teachers, parents and students to refine its Brightspace platform to ensure that the LMS becomes a truly integrated community hub for all. 

“Throughout the process, we’ve received genuine support from D2L,” concludes Giesbricht. “Even though we’re not a huge school, we were taken seriously and all our concerns were addressed. D2L’s ability to have respectful, caring relationships like the ones we promote in our school is why they’re a good fit for PLOA.”