Brightspace Replaces ILearn as Online Learning Platform

The Brightspace home page offering access to course pages and messages. Credit: Sasha Tuddenham '24

Following an eight-month review of the online learning platform iLearn, Marist College will enter the fall 2023 semester using Brightspace. 

Assistant Vice President of Digital Learning Platforms and Technology Julin Sharp is hopeful that Brightspace will address the primary complaints students had about iLearn. “Brightspace is able to provide data, is much more user friendly and also offers a mobile app,” Sharp said.

iLearn, a Sakai product, was one of the best online learning platforms in 2008 when Marist first customized the platform. By adapting the platform, Marist could collaborate with New York University, Notre Dame University and Duke University in a sort of cohort, but since it was not a vendor-supported program, it became outdated. 

Sharp believes that learning technology should be evaluated every three to five years to check out the new products on the market. Marist created a task force and administered a campus-wide survey to begin evaluating iLearn in 2019, but then the COVID pandemic shut everything down. 

“This put a pause on everything because there was no way we were pulling tech from teachers amid a global pandemic,” Sharp said. “When campus activities resumed, we started all over again with a task force with new people across the college in the spring of 2022.”

The task force was composed of two faculty members nominated by the dean per academic school and various constituents like the library, the marketing team and the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. People specializing in campus accessibility also came to meetings to ensure the program chosen would be usable by all students. 

As for student opinions, the task force administered surveys by email and posted QR codes across campus in the spring of 2022, resulting in 648 student responses. 

Sharp explained how they collected a list of needs from the IT department, faculty and students to create an evaluation rubric to look at each system to see what Marist needed moving forward.

Amongst all the platforms ranked -- such as Blackboard, Canvas and Brightspace -- iLearn did not come in last. However, “increased ‘wonkiness’ and weird issues that looked like technical bugs made it frustrating to run a course” on iLearn, Sharp said. 

The mobile app and better notification settings made Brightspace a top choice for students. Students also wanted an ePortfolio space to keep their classwork after they graduate. Additionally, faculty realized they needed a better way to collect data after the Middle States re-accreditation process that occurred in the spring, something that Brightspace specializes in. 

Brightspace training was offered all summer to faculty as they began to create their course pages. They helped faculty members learn the settings comparable to iLearn to offer a smooth transition in the fall. There is also a virtual training page on Brightspace for students who need help adapting to the program. 

“We at Marist are still learning the system, too, so if something is not working as Digital Ed expects, we probably just need to flip a button or turn a system on,” Sharp said. “Just let Digital Ed know, and sometimes it is a product of the system, so we can fix it.”