Posted by Derek Bruff on Monday, January 9, 2017 in News.

The Center for Teaching is glad to announce that Brightspace has been selected as Vanderbilt’s  course management system (CMS). The CFT will help launch Brightspace in Summer 2017. Brightspace will replace Blackboard, the university’s current primary CMS.

The selection and adoption of Brightspace follows a needs assessment and vendor selection process that began in March 2016.  That process included a campus-wide needs assessment survey completed by more than 1,000 students and faculty, public vendor demonstrations, and pilots of Brightspace and other systems under consideration.

In July 2016, a selection committee consisting of students, faculty and staff from all 10 Vanderbilt colleges and schools reviewed the results of this process and recommended that Vanderbilt adopt Brightspace as its next course management system. The committee noted that the system’s clean, modern, user-friendly interface would likely encourage adoption and use by faculty and students, and that the system provides most of the features and tools an instructor or student would expect from a CMS. The committee also noted that D2L, the vendor that provides Brightspace, was helpful, responsive, and professional during the vendor selection and summer pilot process, and came highly recommended by colleagues at other colleges and universities.

The committee’s recommendation was approved by the Provost, and formal contract negotiations, led by Vanderbilt Information Technology, occurred during the Fall 2016 semester. With a contract in hand, the Center for Teaching, as the administrative home of Vanderbilt’s CMS, is leading the implementation phase, with the goal of launching Brightspace at Vanderbilt in April 2017. For more information on Brightspace and the upcoming transition, see the CFT’s Brightspace support site.