A Faculty Guide to a Smooth Transition to D2L Brightspace
The transition from Blackboard to D2L Brightspace is underway! Beginning late February, the LMS admin team will begin migrating courses to the new platform. Only the most recent course offerings (AY 25-26) will be eligible for migration; all earlier courses will be archived and will not migrate into Brightspace. Any courses offered on rotation will be migrated upon request.
In order to ensure a smooth and efficient transition, faculty are encouraged to conduct a course audit on courses selected for migration. Years of course copies and file updates can result in significant digital clutter, including duplicated files, outdated content, and broken links- all of which will be migrated into Brightspace if left in place.
Conducting a course audit before migration helps ensure that only current, intentional materials are transferred, reducing the need for troubleshooting, manual cleanup, or reorganization after migration.
Conducting a Course Audit
A course audit entails reevaluating your course content, removing unnecessary materials, refining learning activities and addressing accessibility requirements. To help distribute the workload, CETAL has prepared a recommended guide to course auditing designed to be completed over four weeks.
- Phase 1: Remove unnecessary/outdated materials
- Phase 2: Review assessments and grade book
- Phase 3: Reorganize your content
- Phase 4: Check accessibility compliance
IMPORTANT!
Before making any changes, consider archiving your course to preserve a complete historical record of teaching, student activities and course content.
Phase 1: Remove unnecessary/outdated materials
Over time, courses accumulate extra files, outdated materials, and redundant resources. Cleaning up unnecessary content keeps your course focused and easy to navigate. Again, before deleting any content, we strongly recommend archiving your course to preserve a backup of your course.
Step 1: Document Files
Review the course content area for Powerpoint presentations, PDFs, and Word documents that are no longer needed.
- Files attached to assignments can be removed by:
- Editing the assignment settings
- Selecting “Mark for removal”
- Clicking “Submit”
- Files uploaded directly to the Course Content Area can be removed by selecting “Delete” from the file link settings. Important: Deleting a file from the Course Content Area removes it from student view but may not permanently remove the file from the course; it must be removed from within the Content Collection by selecting the file and clicking “Recycle.”
Remove or update any outdated/broken web links (including Google drive links).
Step 2: Video Files
Review the Kaltura Media Gallery for obsolete videos, such as instructional lectures, Zoom meetings, or video announcements. Similar to files, removing the link from the Course Content Area does not remove the original source – it must be deleted from the Media Gallery.
Other embedded videos such as YouTube may be removed by deleting the weblink within the Course Content Area.
Step 3: Communication
Announcements will migrate over as drafts, but the availability dates will need to be adjusted in Brightspace. Review and delete announcements you no longer wish to save.
Course Messages will not migrate, so any communication stored there will be lost unless it is saved before migration. To save course messages:
- Navigate to Course Messages
- Open each message you intend to keep
- Copy/paste the message into a secured location
This cleanup doesn’t need to be exhaustive—focus on removing items that are clearly outdated or no longer used. The goal is to ensure only current, intentional content migrates to Brightspace. When in doubt, keep it and move on.
Phase 2: Review assessments and gradebook
Step 1: Tests and Quizzes
Begin by reviewing the Course Content Area for any tests, quizzes, or surveys. Locate and remove any undesired assessment links within the Course Content Area (e.g. Module 1)
Next, review the assessments stored in Test, Surveys, and Pools.
- Navigate to Course Tools> Test, Surveys, and Pools
- Delete any duplicated or irrelevant tests or quizzes that are no longer needed
- Question pools may migrate differently and should be reviewed for duplicates or outdated questions
Note: Only assessments that are not currently deployed (not linked anywhere within the Course Content Area) can be deleted. If a test has been deployed, you must remove the course links before the test can be deleted.
Step 2: Discussions
Navigate to the Discussion Board to review all discussion forums and threads. Remove outdated or undesired discussion activities.
Note: Deleting a graded discussion will also delete the associated grade center column.
Step 3: Gradebook
The full grade center will migrate; however, student submission data will not migrate. If you have not already archived your course, we recommend doing so for safe keeping.
- Review and organize grade center columns.
- Confirm that grade center columns reflect the names of the assignment and assessments.
Considerations:
- Grade center columns will transfer but will default to a points-based grading system.
- Weighted columns and calculated must be set up manually after content has been migrated into Brightspace.
Phase 3: (Re)organize your content
Phase 4: Check for accessibility compliance