"This is a moment we’ve all been waiting for"
March 6, 2018
President Cheryl Jensen announced Tuesday that the College’s new Learning Management System will be a platform known as Brightspace, designed by the Kitchener-based firm, Desire2Learn. She described the company as a leader in digital learning.
“Not only are we marking an important milestone in one of the College’s key digital strategies,” she said in a ceremony to mark the selection of the LMS vendor, “(but) we are marking the beginning of a new partnership between the College and our future Learning Management System.”
About 150 people — employees and students — packed Theatre Lobby of the Student Commons to applaud the announcement, expressing relief that the long wait for a new LMS would soon be over.
“This is a moment we’ve all been waiting for,” said Students' Association President Victoria Ventura.
So it has been. The College began searching for a new system about a year ago, establishing a search committee, staging vendor demonstrations, and surveying students and having them vote on their system preferences.
Cheryl thanked the LMS steering committee members for their hard work, and highlighted the influence that students had on the final choice of Desire2Learn’s Brightspace system. “We did not want to choose this new system for you, we wanted to choose it with you,” she said. “You proved your dedication to an improved system by your overwhelming input and feedback.”
Noting the reality of technological change, Cheryl said there was an absolute need “to bring the College into the future of digital learning, and stay relevant in this generation’s digital learning environments.”
But she emphasized the most important part of the new system is reflected in the word “Learning.”
“Without the right LMS, learning is compromised for all of us. But with the right LMS, learning will have absolutely no boundaries,” she said.
That theme was echoed by others. “This is an exciting partnership for both of our organizations,” said David Baker, senior sales executive for Desire2Learn, or D2L as it is more commonly referenced. “We’ve looked at Algonquin College as a leader in the online space for a number of years, and we wanted to be the platform for that.”
Claude Brulé, Senior Vice President Academic, said the new system gives Algonquin “the opportunity to reimagine our use of the College’s most critical system in partnership with a vendor that shares our commitment to personalized learning.”
Brulé said he was especially pleased that the Brightspace system promises to allow faculty members to focus even more on teaching concerns and, hence, of their students’ success.
The implementation of Brightspace will be carried out over the next few months with the intention of having training sessions available in May and June, along with a “refresher” available in August ahead of the Fall semester.
During this period, the existing LMS — Blackboard Learn — will continue to operate as normal, with system upgrades continuing until the migration to Brightspace is completed.
In her concluding remarks, Cheryl said employees and students would be kept informed about the implementation of the new system, adding that she looked forward to a “seamless launch of Brightspace” in the Fall.