Challenge
Maintaining rich traditions while looking ahead
Founded in 1869, Purdue University is a public land-grant research institution in West Lafayette, Indiana. Offering transformative education for thousands of students each year, Purdue is recognized as one of the top 10 public universities in the U.S.
As a land-grant university, Purdue takes pride in giving back to its local community. “Our founding mission was to make sure that the expertise we produce helps Indiana thrive,” explains Dr. Lindsay Hamm, assistant teaching professor of sociology. “Purdue has a rich tradition of creating excellence and has a strong reputation for innovation and ground-breaking research.”
Today, the faculty at Purdue is focused on making the educational experience as enriching and accessible as possible while the student body grows from year to year. “Our classes are always getting larger,” says Dr. Hamm. “It’s something that’s happening across the country, but especially so at Purdue. It brings challenges to making sure that every student has their needs met.”
With faculty teaching classes with hundreds of students, ensuring that every student has the opportunity to grow, develop and explore new ideas in supportive environments can generate a significant amount of administrative work. Students with functional diversities worried that their requests for accommodations would be lost in the paperwork across classes. Likewise, resources that were already digitized were often scattered across multiple platforms and emails, adding to the difficulty in maintaining up-to-date communication between faculty and students.
At the same time, scaling up online learning brought concerns about data privacy. With the growing use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the education sector, Purdue was interested in making sure that all student data remained private and would not be used by third parties to train large language models. This focus on privacy would not only protect the university’s intellectual property but also help to ensure that online classes remain safe spaces for students to explore ideas without fear of rebuke or ridicule. “Our student privacy is very important,” says Dr. Hamm. “And that’s one of the reasons why I like Brightspace, because we know that our students’ data is going into Brightspace, or my data is going into Brightspace, and it’s not free for people to scrape off the internet.”
Solution
Digitalizing in the classroom and beyond
To meet the needs of its growing student population, Purdue selected D2L Brightspace to build a one-stop platform for course administration, hybrid learning, student-faculty communication and extracurricular activities. “We wanted to standardize and simplify the university experience, fostering a strong sense of community no matter how large online cohorts or classrooms get,” explains Dr. Hamm.
Working with D2L, Purdue can uphold its commitment to safeguarding student data and maintaining its strong compliance with the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). “Student privacy is a key part of every decision we make,” explains Dr. Hamm. “We set high standards for every technology partner we work with, and D2L was able to meet our requirements. We especially like the fact that our students can be confident that their university work is private.”
Recognizing the benefits of centralized communication across its large student body, Purdue also decided to manage extracurricular activities using Brightspace. Resources for student clubs and organizations are hosted on the platform, providing students with a single gateway for making the most of their time at the university. “Recently, I started a new student organization,” says Sanjana Bhagavatula, student of psychology and sociology and teaching assistant of sociology. “This requires training, which I was able to complete through Brightspace. It’s a great place for me to store all the resources for organization members.”
With learning and extracurricular resources hosted on one platform, students can manage their time better. “I’m very involved on campus,” says Bhagavatula. “Brightspace allows me to streamline everything and keep up with learning, my dance team, the Indian Classical Music Association and being a teaching assistant all at the same time.”
Result
Nurturing a strong sense of community
With a centralized platform for learning and teaching, Purdue is providing world-class education to even more students, without creating additional administrative work for faculty. “Brightspace helps me to keep track of everything and makes it easier for me to give individualized feedback,” explains Dr. Hamm.
Accessing resources and support and reaching out to faculty are now also much simpler for students. “I feel like Brightspace is the basis of my existence as a student at Purdue,” says Bhagavatula. “There’s not a day where I don’t log in; it gives me access to everything I need.”
Delivering extra support with dignity
Simplifying the management of accessibility provisions with Brightspace is also helping students with functional diversities learn at their best without feeling singled out. “Every instructor absolutely loves that they can go to our class roster and set up the accessibility settings for the whole semester for each student,” notes Dr. Hamm. “If someone needs extra time, the setting just automatically applies to all their assignments. Such a subtle way to incorporate accommodations also means their privacy and dignity is protected; no one apart from faculty can see who is entitled to additional support.”
At the same time, the platform is offering enhanced flexibility for educators. “With Brightspace, I can refine the way I teach my classes at any time,” reflects Dr. Hamm. “Last week I had my students vote on how we calculate the final grade. And then I could go into Brightspace and change the way the calculations are done, and it automatically recalculated the grade book for me. It’s something that we can use to really make the classes our own.”
As Purdue continues to grow, it looks forward to building community across the campus and beyond. “My goal with a hybrid approach to teaching is for students to think about learning as more than just this one room and this one professor,” concludes Dr. Hamm. “I want them to connect with each other and feel safe in exploring their thoughts. I hope they take the skills that I teach them into the rest of their lives.”
INTERVIEWEES
- Dr. Lindsay Hamm, AI innovation fellow and assistant teaching professor of sociology
- Sanjana Bhagavatula, student of psychology and sociology, teaching assistant of sociology