Marist is committed to providing its faculty, students, and staff with the best possible educational technology to teach, learn, and collaborate. The College has used iLearn as its online learning platform since 2008. This summer, Marist will adopt a new system, Brightspace, that is intuitive, engaging, and mobile-friendly. Brightspace will provide the Marist community with the tools, features, and analytics for our faculty to teach, students to learn, and colleagues to collaborate.

In summer 2022, a task force of faculty and staff was convened to assess iLearn and explore alternative systems. This work is the continuation of work that was launched in 2019 but paused due to the pandemic. Throughout this past summer and fall, the eighteen-member task force assessed the functionality of the current system and examined two alternative systems, Brightspace and Canvas. Faculty were involved in every step of this process, engaging in a rigorous analysis of our current system and how it compares to alternatives. The group met with representatives from Brightspace and Canvas, conducted a needs assessment, hosted open sandbox sessions, and surveyed the College community. Findings were shared with the President’s Cabinet, IOG, academic deans, and the Academic Affairs Committee.  

Brightspace is a learning management system. Brightspace will replace iLearn as our campus learning management system in 2023. Brightspace is the industry leader in data analytics and accessibility. It's also the leading learning management system in new adoptions in North America.

Click the link below to view a brief video about Brightspace:

Brightspace 101 What is D2L Brightspace LMS?

• Announcement of Transition: February, 8, 2023
• Brightspace available to faculty, staff, & students: Mid-April 2023
• Summer courses moved into Brightspace: Mid-April 2023
• Training begins: April 2023
• Fall courses moved into Brightspace: Mid-August 2023
• Full implementation: Fall 2023
• iLearn no longer available: June 2024

Brightspace includes additional features that iLearn does not include, but most of the features that are commonly used in iLearn will be available in Brightspace, including the following:

• Announcements
• Assignments
• Content - files, pages, links, video
• Discussions
• Folders/Modules
• Grades
• Group management
• Rubrics
• Tests and Quizzes
• Third-party tools (Anthology, H5P, Panopto, Piazza, Perusall, TurnItIn, Zoom)

Yes, training will be available beginning in April. Training will be available in-person and online in both synchronous and asynchronous formats.

Faculty will have courses that were offered from Summer 2022 to Spring 2023 automatically moved into Brightspace.  If you have a need to move a different course, a form will be available to make requests later this spring.

Project sites will not be copied automatically. Should you want your project site transitioned to Brightspace, a form will be available to make requests later this spring. 

Course sites created prior to Summer of 2022 will not automatically be transferred to Brightspace. A form will be available to request the transfer of additional courses. Additionally, student content will not be transferred with course materials. 

You will be able to log into iLearn until the end of the Spring 2024 term, but new courses and rosters will not be fed after Summer 2023.
Faculty will no longer be able to access iLearn sites as of August 16, 2024. Faculty will be able to request to retrieve archived courses through Digital Education (digital.education@marist.edu) until December 2025. After 2025 requests for archived courses will no longer be granted.

Panopto videos do not live within iLearn (the LMS), they are actually in a different location and integrated. We’ll be integrating Panopto into Brightspace (the new LMS) so all faculty videos within Panopto will be available in the new system.

To access your Panopto Videos outside of the LMS: Marist Panopto Home

Sakai (iLearn) has served the Marist community well since 2008, including the through the pandemic. It has not, however, kept pace with industry standards. Marist aspires to provide the best online learning platform for its faculty, staff, and students. Brightspace is an engaging and modern platform that is an industry leader in key areas important to the Marist community, including engagement, data, analytics, and accessibility.  

Yes, you can join the Brightspace Community to review tips and ideas from various Brightspace users. This is not associated with Marist, so you’d need to create a separate login. Brightspace also has a robust YouTube channel that contains video tutorials. 

The Brightspace mobile app is called Pulse. You can get this in the app store on your device. You will not be able to log into Marist's Brightspace instance until the official launch date.