Brightspace Faculty FAQs

Brightspace (by D2L) is the Learning Management System (LMS) that will be replacing Blackboard at SUNY Cortland. The migration from Blackboard to Brightspace is underway. A Brightspace pilot was launched in Fall 2022 and will conclude at the end of the Spring 2023 semester. SUNY Cortland will fully switch over to Brightspace at the beginning of the Summer 2023 semester.

Blackboard data will be available until December 31, 2023 to allow for grade challenges.

This migration of the LMS is part of a larger SUNY initiative to implement a common Digital Learning Environment (DLE) across SUNY. The DLE will consist of the LMS (Brightspace), several common tool integrations, a common technical architecture and data integration, and a common look and feel for faculty and students. The DLE will allow SUNY to take advantage of economies of scale, better share best practices and resources across campuses, assure strong technical, instructional design and academic supports, and provide a familiar platform for students, faculty and staff who learn and teach at multiple institutions.

SUNY chose D2L’s Brightspace Learning Management System to replace Blackboard when SUNY’s current system-wide Blackboard contract expires on December 21, 2022. This decision was made after an extensive RFP process conducted by a team of representatives from SUNY System Administration and more than 40 faculty and staff from 15 different SUNY campuses (including SUNY Cortland). The process included an evaluation of submitted Reponses, a thorough review of functional requirements, and day-long presentations from the most highly rated vendors. Additional information regarding the RFP can be found on the SUNY DLE Website.

The migration from Blackboard to D2L's Brightspace is underway. A Brightspace pilot was launched in Fall 2022 and will conclude at the end of the Spring 2023 semester. SUNY Cortland will fully switch over to Brightspace on May 17, 2023 at the beginning of the Summer 2023 semester.

Yes! Once logged into myRedDragon, faculty members have a “Brightspace” tab, choose the “Access Brightspace” link and the SUNY Brightspace Fundamentals Course can be found under the My Courses tab. Completion of the Brightspace Fundamentals course is essential for all faculty to teach in Brightspace. First-time online instructors can expect to take six to ten hours to complete the course. Experienced online instructors can complete the training in less than one hour. All faculty, have access now to Brightspace tab.

The good news is that the majority of standard course content and tool objects (like pages, files, assignments, discussion forums, quizzes, images, links, etc.) that currently reside in Blackboard will migrate quite easily to Brightspace! There are exceptions, however, involving content created with specialized Blackboard tools, integrations to third-party resources, and certain assessment question types that are specific to Blackboard (e.g. Quiz Bowl, Hot Spot, Jumbled Sentence, etc.). We will be providing a listing of known exceptions as we work with faculty to migrate their courses.

A group of tutorials has been created to help you move individual content from Blackboard to your computer. One of the most asked questions is "How do I get a copy of my test/quiz/exam in a word file?" Downloading from Blackboard

We will be asking you to complete a migration request form for your course or courses you need migrated from Blackboard to Brightspace. We will create a Migration Sandbox for your course that you can copy and "clean up" your content for the initial migration of the content into a Brightspace, making it ready to copy it into your semester-based shell when it becomes available. See Blackboard Course Migration to Brightspace article for more instructions.

Once logged into myRedDragon, faculty members have a “Brightspace” tab, choose the “Access Brightspace” link and the SUNY Brightspace Fundamentals Course can be found under the My Courses tab. First-time online instructors can expect to take six to ten hours to complete the course. Experienced users of Brightspace can complete the training in one to three hours.

SUNY Cortland Instructional Designers provide introductory training to all faculty in the Brightspace environment. All Brightspace workshops require registration. 

Information regarding the Blackboard cleanup process and work that can be done now in preparation for the migration can be found on our Blackboard Course Migration to Brightspace page.