Michigan Virtual

Many asynchronous students needed clearer support for managing their time, tracking progress and staying on pace. Michigan Virtual partnered with D2L’s Custom Development team to create the Student Pacing Tool, a D2L Brightspace-based solution that delivers personalized due dates, clearer grade-to-date visibility and real-time pacing guidance.

By embedding individualized pacing directly into D2L Brightspace, Michigan Virtual added structure without sacrificing flexibility. Early results show stronger assignment completion, improved pacing behavior and statistically significant gains in final grades.

The Challenge

Creating structure in a flexible learning model

Michigan Virtual has long focused on expanding access to high-quality online learning for middle and high school students across Michigan. But in a fully asynchronous environment, that flexibility also created a persistent challenge: Many students struggled to manage their time, stay on pace and clearly understand their progress in a course.

Research and internal performance data showed a consistent pattern. When students had complete flexibility and few pacing guardrails, they were more likely to delay getting started, underestimate the workload and attempt large portions of a course near the end of the term. That often led to lower assessment performance, superficial engagement with course material, increased stress and weaker long-term retention.

The challenge was made even more complex by Michigan Virtual’s instructional model. The organization serves hundreds of districts across the state, each with its own academic calendar, and students with different start and end dates are often enrolled in the same course section. A single fixed set of due dates was not feasible. At the same time, Michigan Virtual’s earlier pacing tool lived outside D2L Brightspace, which required separate maintenance and could not automatically account for completed work or provide real-time, personalized guidance.

Michigan Virtual needed a way to preserve the flexibility that supports access and equity while giving students clearer structure, more meaningful pacing support and a more accurate picture of their progress directly within the learning experience.

The Solution

Embedding personalized pacing directly into Brightspace

To address this challenge, Michigan Virtual designed and implemented the Student Pacing Tool, a Brightspace-based solution that gives each student personalized suggested due dates, clearer grade-to-date visibility and real-time progress guidance. Built in partnership with D2L’s Custom Development team, the tool uses student enrollment data to generate individualized pacing directly within Brightspace.

The work began after Michigan Virtual piloted Automatic Zeros in fall 2023 in Advanced Placement courses with fixed due dates. That pilot highlighted the value of automation, but Michigan Virtual’s broader course catalog required a more dynamic approach. In spring 2024, Michigan Virtual partnered with the Custom Development team to define requirements and develop a solution that could respond to each student’s enrollment timeline while fitting the organization’s flexible instructional model. After design, prototyping, testing and refinement, the Student Pacing Tool was deployed in May 2025.

The resulting solution allows staff to build pacing guides within each source course by selecting content items and assigning pacing percentages. When a student enrolls, the tool retrieves relevant start and end dates from Michigan Virtual’s student information system and applies business rules aligned to the organization’s course models [image 1]. It then uses Brightspace Special Access to apply individualized due dates to assignments and quizzes, so pacing expectations appear directly where students are already learning and working.

[image 1] A personalized student schedule view also accessible by teachers and mentors. A. Start Date | B. End Date | C. Target Date | D. Submission Date | E. Items Completed | F. Grade to Date | G. Days Off Pace | H. Status Flags (Due Today, Overdue, On Pace)

This feature shifted pacing guidance from an external reference to a living part of the course experience. Michigan Virtual also paired dynamic due dates with Automatic Zeros and updated grading settings to create a clearer grade-to-date view for students, mentors, instructors, and families [image 2]. To streamline grading workflows and reduce manual effort, the organization used Brightspace Data Sets and Brightspace Insights to support reporting and identify discussion board activities that required manual zero-entry, since discussion posts were not covered by Automatic Zeros functionality.

[image 2] The tool displays a pacing status flag — either “Overdue” or “On Pace.” A. Items Completed | B. Grade to Date | C. Status (Overdue or On Pace)

The Result

Building momentum through personalized pacing

Michigan Virtual’s Student Pacing Tool is already showing encouraging results. To assess its impact, the organization compared LMS gradebook data from summer 2024, before implementation, with summer 2025 data collected after implementation. While Michigan Virtual notes that these findings are preliminary and do not establish causation, the results suggest the new pacing approach is helping students stay more engaged and make steadier progress.

“After implementation, students submitted approximately two additional assignments in a 53-assignment course, representing about a 3.8% increase in assignment completion,” says Cheri Fraser, learning technology manager at Michigan Virtual. “We also saw assignment submission patterns improve over the summer 2025 term, with students submitting work, on average, just under one week after the suggested due date. Together, these findings point to stronger pacing behavior and fewer extended delays.”

Michigan Virtual also saw improvement in final course performance. Final grades in summer 2025 were modestly higher than in summer 2024, and that increase was statistically significant even after accounting for school, course and enrollment characteristics. Beyond the measurable outcomes, the Student Pacing Tool also improved communication among students, mentors, families and instructors by making progress, pacing and grade-to-date performance easier to understand.

Michigan Virtual plans to continue analyzing additional gradebook data to determine whether these trends continue over time. Even at this early stage, the Student Pacing Tool represents a meaningful step forward in helping students navigate flexible online learning with greater clarity, consistency and support.