Transitioning to a new learning platform always brings opportunities for discovery, growth, and innovation. For Scott Lopes, the move to Brightspace has been especially meaningful, shaped by involvement in both the rollout process and the classroom experience itself. With insight from both perspectives, he shares how Brightspace has helped create a more intuitive, flexible, and student-centered learning environment. 

“Transitioning to Brightspace has been a uniquely rewarding experience for me because I’ve approached it from two perspectives: as a member of the project and implementation team, and also as an adjunct faculty member. Being involved in the rollout gave me an early look at the platform’s capabilities, and that insight motivated me to participate in the pilot program — not just to test the system, but to understand how it could genuinely improve the learning experience for my students.  Working hands‑on in my sandbox course, experimenting with tools, and collaborating closely with our instructional design team has reinforced how valuable it is to explore features directly.  

Compared to Bridges, Brightspace has allowed me to refine my course layout in ways that simply weren’t possible before; the structure feels cleaner, more intuitive, and better aligned with how students navigate digital content. I’ve also received feedback from students on how they like the layout and how everything is easily accessed from the module without having to look in different sections of the LMS.  

For faculty preparing to transition, my advice is to take advantage of the help content our instructional design team has created as  it’s thorough, practical, and saves a tremendous amount of time.  Overall, Brightspace has made my teaching more flexible, more engaging, and more aligned with the needs of today’s learners, and I’m excited to continue refining my courses as I add new and exciting ways to present the course content.”

We in Instructional Design love Biology Professor, Paul Webb, for his approach to creating enlivened and thoughtful course content.  He is known for adding a layer of humor to his courses, and making complex biological concepts more accessible and fun.  As a Fall Brightspace Pilot instructor, when we challenged him to learn and create a course in Brightspace, we knew he would not let us down.  After a semester in teaching in Brightspace, here’s what he has to say: 

“I have really enjoyed the challenge of transitioning my courses to Brightspace. While it would have been relatively easy to import my Bridges content as it currently exists, instead I took this opportunity to rethink how I presented my course materials and do some building from the ground up to take advantage of Brightspace's features. One particular change I made is to increase the interactivity of my course materials. I have long provided students with my own full-text lecture materials in place of a textbook, and with Bridges these were in the form of a static PDF file. With the html editor in Brightspace, I have converted these static files into interactive web pages, including video clips, embedded quizzes and problem sets, and more. Brightspace's user interface is intuitive, and easy to navigate. Other features I really like include the grading tool, which allows me to annotate, markup, and return student submissions without having to download and reupload the assignments. I also like having the ability for both instructor and students to leave video messages. For years I have had students post a short video introduction to themselves at the start of the semester, and this always required third party sites, or a cumbersome set of steps through Bridges and Panopto. Now this capability is seamlessly built into Brightspace itself. It has been a bit of a learning curve for both me and the students, in terms of figuring out which settings and layouts make the most sense for all of us, but the training provided through the pilot program, and the excellent support from the ID staff have made for an easy transition. I am looking forward to the challenge of expanding my Brightspace course offerings next semester.” 

You can learn more about Paul Webb here:  Paul Webb bio | RWU FSSNS
More about the tools Paul used in his Brightspace course Creator + and H5P

Natasha participated in the intensive Brightspace summer pilot program, which trained faculty to teach in Brightspace for this fall.  She quickly adapted to the new platform, and developed her online course content to align with her dynamic teaching style.  Here are some of her reflections:

"Transitioning to Brightspace from Bridges has been wonderful for both me and the students. Learning about the available tools has helped me to be thoughtful about what kinds of ways I can experiment with my pedagogy.  Finding ways to tinker with tools in my sandbox, and use the support provided both by our ID team and Brightspace has been a meta-lesson in how important experiential learning can be. Students who are accustomed to using other learning management systems are much more comfortable with the look and feel of Brightspace, and navigating in the course is a lot more intuitive for everyone involved. I have been thrilled to build lessons and assessments on which I know I can improve each year without having to rebuild from scratch. This will allow me to save my time and energy for the more impactful and relational parts of teaching.  The style of Brightspace helps me to design a thoughtful course page that can accommodate different learning styles and strengths, and make sometimes complex and technical material much more fun and accessible."

Natasha is an accomplished faculty member at the Law School, and you can can read more about her academic career, collaborations and publications in her faculty profile.