Brightspace Spring16 Modernizes Education With Latest Analytics, Video, and Mobile Capabilities

WATERLOO, ON--(Marketwired - February 24, 2016) - D2L, a global technology leader that makes learning experiences better, today announces the Brightspace Spring16 release. Brightspace -- a cloud-based learning platform -- now features a new user experience, video, mobile, and predictive analytics capabilities to make learning more engaging and affordable than ever.

"Globally, we are spending more on education than at any point in history, but we need to do things differently to deliver better results," said D2L CEO John Baker. "This new technology helps modernize the educational experience and is designed to improve learning outcomes, keep students engaged, and address gaps in course selection that will help reduce costs and shorten the time to graduation for millions of students."

BRIGHTSPACE SPRING16 ENHANCEMENTS

Brightspace Degree Compass™ Uses Predictive Analytics to Shorten the Path to Graduation, Saving Students Time and Money

Brightspace Degree Compass helps students predict the optimal path to graduation, reducing the cost of education. The original solution-pioneered by Austin Peay State University and funded by a Gates Foundation grant -- has now been redesigned as a cloud-based and mobile -- first application that works with two leading student information systems. Both students and Academic Advisors can use Degree Compass via their smartphones to select the right courses on the best path to success.

According to Complete College America: "Billions of dollars and millions of hours are wasted on unnecessary courses. Excess credits are estimated to cost more than $19 billion each year. Of that amount, nearly $8 billion is paid by students -- and more than $11 billion is the unnecessary burden of taxpayers who subsidize public higher education."

Brightspace Degree Compass uses predictive modeling to uniquely match students with the courses that best fit their academic talents and program requirements to drive academic success and degree completion. Combining individual student performance and preparedness data with the data of all the students who have taken the same degree path, Degree Compass generates a custom set of recommended courses in prioritized order. This helps students stay on track to graduate, saving them countless hours of extra coursework and excessive tuition fees.

Brightspace Capture™ -- Searchable Lecture and Student Presentation Videos

The new Brightspace Capture allows instructors to deliver media-rich content (for example, speaker video with a PowerPoint® or webcast) to a global audience. By recording a presentation and then broadcasting it live or on-demand, every member of the audience is able to enjoy a front-row experience so they can get the most out of the content wherever they are and on any device.

With 1 billion mobile views on YouTube™ every day, it is clear that mobile video has become a key tool for engaging students. Brightspace Capture is a cloud-based and mobile-first solution designed to run on any device-laptop, mobile, tablet, and seamlessly stream at various speeds -- so users can consume learning videos anywhere and on their favourite device.

Similar to how the most popular search engines turned the internet into an incredible source of knowledge, Brightspace Capture does the same for educational videos. It automatically indexes and makes them searchable, enabling learners to instantly search thousands of hours of video and take students to the exact moments their search term is mentioned. This dramatically improves the use of lecture capture and video in studying. 

New Brightspace Daylight User Experience -- Clean and Easier to Use

With Spring16, D2L is excited to showcase the Daylight User Experience across three new products: Brightspace Assignment Grader for Android, Brightspace Capture, and Brightspace Degree Compass. Brightspace Daylight is clean and easy to use and it allows users and instructors to focus on what is most important. The rest of the Brightspace platform will be upgraded to the new Daylight Experience in the months ahead.

Brightspace Assignment Grader for iOS and Now Android™ -- Teachers Can Grade Anywhere, Anytime

Instructors have become increasingly mobile. With Brightspace Assignment Grader, instructors are freed from their office computers with a simple, flexible, and offline-grading tool that synchronizes seamlessly with Brightspace. Teachers can do much more than simply enter a grade. They can provide meaningful feedback through annotations and attach video and audio feedback in-context so that students gain even more personalized feedback on their assignments.

For more information about the Brightspace Spring16 release, visit www.brightspace.com.

ABOUT D2L

D2L is the software leader that makes the learning experience better. The company's cloud-based platform -- Brightspace -- is not a common one-size-fits-all learning management system (LMS). It's easier to use, more flexible, and smart. With Brightspace, you can personalize the experience for every learner to deliver real results. The company is a world leader in learning analytics: its platform predicts learner performance so that you can take action in real-time to keep them on track. Brightspace is used by learners in higher education, K-12, and the enterprise sector, including the Fortune 1000. D2L has operations in the United States, Canada, Europe, Australia, Brazil, and Singapore. | www.brightspace.com

The D2L family of companies includes D2L Corporation, D2L Ltd, D2L Australia Pty Ltd, D2L Europe Ltd, D2L Asia Pte Ltd, and D2L Brasil Soluções de Tecnologia para Educação Ltda.

All D2L marks are trademarks of D2L Corporation.

IOS is a trademark or registered trademark of Cisco in the U.S. and other countries.

PowerPoint is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries.

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