Marist Announces Transition from iLearn to Brightspace

Brightspace offers a mobile app called Pulse that allows students to check their class pages and receive notifications about deadlines. Source: Apple App Store

After sixteen years of students logging into their iLearn pages, Marist College announced that the school is retiring iLearn and switching to a new, modernized learning platform – Brightspace.

Following an eight month process of reviewing iLearn through campus surveys and comparisons to alternative platforms, the College announced the transition to the student body via email on Feb. 8.

“iLearn has been our system for a long time. But very few colleges and universities use Sakai-based systems (iLearn is a Sakai system) anymore,” Dr. James Snyder explained. “There have been no adoptions of Sakai-based systems in North America and Europe in the last five years, and more and more colleges and universities are abandoning iLearn for more powerful and user-friendly systems.”

Evaluations of iLearn began in 2020, but Marist determined it would be too disruptive to switch learning platforms during the Covid-19 pandemic. After the college moved away from online and hybrid classes, the assessment of iLearn resumed.

“We believe [Brightspace] will give students, faculty, and staff a simpler to use, more modern system with expanded capabilities,” Dr. Snyder and Dr. Julin Sharp said in the email.

Brightspace offers a variety of new features, including ePortfolios that students can utilize to keep their work even after graduating; updated accessibility features with automated closed captioning; a modernized user interface; and most notably, a mobile app.

The mobile app, Pulse, was one of the most highly requested features from students. Pulse allows students to check their assignments on-the-go and gives students the option to receive notifications for messages, assignments and deadlines.

According to the email from the Digital Education Department, Marist will initiate a “phased transition to Brightspace starting with summer courses, and prepare for a full deployment at the start of the fall 2023 semester.” The College added that training resources will be made available to students and faculty in March to aid the transition to a new platform.

“The training of students and faculty is of the utmost importance. We are going to use a mix of in-person and virtual workshops, asynchronous trainings and individual meetings to help students and faculty learn the new system,” Dr. Snyder said.

Since the announcement, students have expressed a mixture of excitement and concern about the transition.

“I think everyone has a similar concern about learning to navigate an entirely new website. The layout may be completely different and possibly have a frustrating experience, which is especially unneeded during the first week of class,” Andrew Breen ‘25 said. “Overall I'm not really excited about the switch, but I trust in Marist that this service is better than iLearn.”

Despite the promise of a contemporary, easy-to-use platform, students are worried that the switch to Brightspace could prove more to be more trouble than it's worth.

“I’m half excited and half frustrated about the switch from ilearn to brightspace,” Kirsten Mattern ‘24 said. “I’m hoping the platform will be more up-to-date and user-friendly for both professors and students, but I'm frustrated to learn a new system just for my senior year of college.”

Other than Mattern’s reservations about the platform, she felt confident that this generation of tech-savvy students will acclimate to Brightspace with ease.

“ I am excited at the prospect of just having a more organized online space because I find that I use iLearn a lot to keep track  of my academics, yet sometimes professors don’t use it or use it effectively,” Mattern said.

Professors at Marist share similar sentiments to their students, though their outlook seems to be more positive after the initial announcement.

“I think the main concern [for professors] is the same as students are facing,” Dr. Juris Pupcenoks said. “You will have to re-learn a new system and learn to be efficient in it.”

Dr. Pupcenoks explained that iLearn’s grading features, among other things, were often confusing and overly-complicated. In contrast, he believes the “intuitive” interface of Brightspace will make the new platform easier to master.

Professor Babette Fasolino has previous experience using Brightspace in the classroom, and found the program fairly easy to learn. She highlighted her enjoyment of Brightspace’s tagging option in discussion posts, which allows students and professors to share information with each other that they found useful or inspiring.

“Overall, the layout is less cluttered and students that I have taught on Brightspace found the courses easy to navigate and more visually interesting,” Professor Fasolino said.