Carleton Selects Brightspace as its New Learning Management System

July 13, 2020

Following extensive consultations and evaluations with its teaching and learning community, Carleton University has selected Brightspace by Desire2Learn as its new Learning Management System (LMS) to replace cuLearn in the spring 2021 term.

D2L is headquartered in Waterloo, Ont. and its Brightspace platform is widely adopted across the province and internationally. In Ottawa, Brightspace is the LMS for University of Ottawa, Algonquin College and La Cité.

“Carleton strives to enable and encourage pedagogical approaches that foster access, inclusion and success,” said Provost and Vice-President (Academic) Jerry Tomberlin. “With this partnership with D2L, we see opportunities for our instructors, students, staff and community to adopt innovative and impactful ways of supporting teaching and learning.”

The fully accessible and scalable Brightspace platform will provide several key advantages to Carleton’s community of educators and learners, including:

Substantial improvements in performance, responsiveness and reliability
A simpler interface and more intuitive gradebook
24/7 support for faculty, staff and students
Data visualization tools that help instructors understand how students are interacting with, and performing in, courses
Updates and new features that are predictably and regularly applied without outages or Carleton staff holding responsibility for debugging and testing
A more simplified and consistent experience for students in joint programs and instructors who collaborate in shared courses with post-secondary institutions in Ottawa

“Carleton’s educators are dedicated to providing the best possible learning experiences to our students and we need to ensure that our suite of educational tools enhances their ability to do so,” said David Hornsby, Associate Vice-President (Teaching and Learning). “By adopting D2L’s Brightspace platform, we’ll be providing the Carleton community with an easy to use, yet powerful tool to support engaged learning anytime, anyplace.”

While the university plans to adopt Brightspace in May 2021, a limited pilot will be available for interested instructors in the winter 2021 term. Courses will be migrated from cuLearn to Brightspace and there will be extensive training, support and documentation to support the transition leading up to May 2021.

The campus community will continue to be updated as the migration to the new LMS unfolds on Carleton’s new Brightspace website.