As you have hopefully heard, GBC is in the process of moving away from our former Learning Management System, Blackboard Learn, into D2L Brightspace over the coming 8 months.
I’m writing to welcome you to the D2L Brightspace Winter 2023 Training cohort, as you have been identified by your Chair/Director as someone who will be using D2L in the coming months and will be learning about it during the winter semester. Over the course of this semester, along with 200+ of your faculty colleagues, the D2L transition team will be helping to introduce you to our new GBC Learning Management System (LMS), D2L Brightspace. Our goal is to help you get comfortable with the new LMS and its tools, start to explore what your courses will look like in the new environment, and ensure that you are all set and ready to teach in D2L in May 2023 and/or beyond. Click here to see an overview of what this training program will involve. The program will include both synchronous and asynchronous components, and will be embedded within a Community of Practice context, emphasizing peer to peer learning and sharing within smaller cohorts of faculty. While you are participating in the program, we will be migrating your courses over to D2L in the background, so that they are there and ready for you once you’ve completed the training.
Our commitment is to ensure that you have clear expectations in terms of what’s involved, and that you will have the support you need throughout the process to ensure that you are set up for success. To that end, as we design your learning experience, we’d like to ask you to take 5 minutes to complete the linked questionnaire, so that we can meet your needs as closely as possible. In addition, we will be holding an optional Online D2L Information Session this Thursday at 3:00 pm, open to all employees who wish to learn more about the transition plan. You can register for that session here.
I cannot emphasize enough how excited I am for our GBC Teaching and Learning Community to be moving into D2L Brightspace, and the ways in which it will support our commitment to high impact, inclusive and engaging learning experiences. We will be in touch in the coming weeks with more information about your D2L orientation session happening in the end of January. And, if you can’t wait until then to get started, you can join the D2L Community to explore their self-directed courses right away! (Simply set up an account using your GBC email address and a password of your choosing).
We have setup a D2L support page on TLX website, please visit D2L support page for more information.
If, at any time, you have any questions or suggestions, please don’t hesitate to connect with me directly (Heidi.marsh@georgebrown.ca). In the meantime, I wish you a very successful start to the 2023 Winter Term.
