Brightspace Implementation Timeline

Posted by Derek Bruff on Monday, February 13, 2017 in Announcements.

by Derek Bruff, Director, Center for Teaching

As we announced last month, Brightspace has been selected as Vanderbilt’s next course management system, replacing Blackboard. I’m writing now to update the campus on the planned implementation timeline, based on what we know as of this writing (February 13th). What follows is (a) brief and (b) somewhat technical, so feel free to email brighstpace@vanderbilt.edu if you have questions.

• March 1st – The Vanderbilt instance of Brightspace will be configured and integrated with single sign-on and student record systems, but not yet accessible to students and instructors, just system administrators. Most, if not all, of the completed courses we’re migrating from Blackboard (those offered between Summer 2014 and Fall 2016) will be copied to Brightspace. (Note that changes made to these “old” courses on Blackboard after migration won’t be reflected on Brightspace.)
• March 15th – Brightspace will open to instructors teaching Summer 2017 courses so they can begin building courses there. (Note that these instructors can begin building their courses on Blackboard prior to this time. We’ll copy them to Brightspace just before March 15th.) Not all third-party integrations will be available, but high priority integrations (e.g. Kaltura, Remote Proctor, textbook publisher integrations) will be ready by this point.
• April 1st – Brightspace will open to the entire campus. All third-party integrations should be available at this point. Instructors teaching Fall 2017 courses will be able to start building those courses on Brightspace.
• Late April – Summer 2017 courses will start running on Brightspace. Maymester instructors will have the option to run their courses on Blackboard or Brightspace, but any summer course that runs past the end of May needs to run on Brightspace.
• May – After grades are submitted for Spring 2017 courses, these courses will be migrated to Brightspace.
• June – All courses will run on Brightspace, and Blackboard will be archived.

Please note that student content (assignments, discussion forum posts, as well as all grade information) cannot be migrated from Blackboard to Brightspace. Instructors and students who need access to such content can request it from the Blackboard archive by emailing Brightspace Support at the Center for Teaching, brightspace@vanderbilt.edu. Please allow at least two business days for processing.