Students and staff satisfied with new Learning Management System

In the academic year 2024-25, all faculties started to partially implement the new education system instead of Blackboard in a pre-planned trajectory. A research was conducted with more than 300 students and 47 teachers to gather their experience with Brightspace during the partial-implementation period. More than 90 percent of the students stated that they did not require help when using Brightspace. Among the teachers, Brightspace was rated an average of 7.9 on a scale of 1 to 10. The research shows that BETA students rated their satisfaction with Brightspace an average of 7.4, and students from the remaining faculties rated it an average of 7.8.  

Professors have described the system as user-friendly, intuitive and pleasant to use. Although some students DUB has talked to have described problems with the website, such as difficulty in downloading the lecture slides, most believe that it is an improvement on Blackboard. The study found similar sentiments as one of the professors said: “Works a lot more intuitively than Blackboard.” Likewise a student says: “Good idea to switch to Brightspace! In my opinion it works better than Blackboard.”

Improvements and Support
The researchers are listening to the feedback from the pilot. They asked for input on some of the key parts of the system. For example, students were asked whether they prefer a fixed course format, meaning every course’s page would be structured the same, or a variable one in which the teachers could change according to their wishes. A majority of students preferred a fixed format, which the organizers are taking into account. 

Some changes have already been put into effect following the research. A widget for the teachers to introduce themselves and their courses have been implemented. Certain functions were made more user-friendly in line with the feedback. Other areas are still being worked on. As teachers found the grading and assessment difficult, the organizers are working on ways to improve this function. 

For any staff or students struggling with the transition, there are many online and physical resources. At the end of 2025, UU’s contract with Blackboard will cease. Students and staff are advised to secure any educational material before then as the next academic year will start with a full transition into Brightspace. There are resources to help transform the academic material in Blackboard to Brightspace for both students and staff on the UU website. Furthermore, there are support desks set up at both USP and City Center, most notably a Central Brightspace Support desk in the Educatorium, for both students and teachers to make use of. 

Why Brightspace?
In UU’s tender for a new LMS, the selection was 80 percent focused on quality and 20 percent on price. The quality criteria was made up of user-friendliness, public values, sustainability and other academic wishes.

A committee of UU experts assessed the four parties that joined the tender on these criteria. Also, user tests that included staff, students and key users were conducted to determine the user-friendliness. Brightspace was ranked the highest for user-friendliness. Brightspace also received high scores on usability and public values, such as their intent to abide by the European AI act.