Kitchener, Waterloo, Feb. 13, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) --
D2L, the global learning technology leader, today announced the winners of the 2019 D2L Excellence Awards, which recognize educators, trainers, and leaders in employee engagement that have used the Brightspace platform to deliver learning experiences that are innovative, collaborative, or have made an extraordinary impact on learning outcomes.
“As D2L’s market momentum grows globally, the D2L Excellence Awards have become increasingly competitive and, more importantly, point to some exciting education innovation globally,” said John Baker, CEO of D2L. “We’re proud to recognize this year’s five winners for delivering truly excellent learning experiences.”
EXCELLENCE AWARD WINNERS
California State University Long Beach (CSULB) — USA: In years past, CSULB has held a one-day orientation event for all incoming freshmen and transfer students. By using Brightspace to host this orientation program, the university has helped introduce more than 18,000 students over the past two years to a wealth of necessary information ranging from campus safety, campus resources, and campus priorities to advising and registration. In addition, the new program allows students to become familiar with Brightspace before even setting foot on campus.
Gay Lea Foods Co-operative Limited — Canada: Gay Lea Foods is a successful and growing co-operative in the Canadian dairy industry. Working with the Learning and Creative Services team at D2L, Gay Lea Foods has developed eight courses covering a wide variety of topics, including sessions on each aspect of board governance and membership, as well as courses that provide the company’s directors and delegates with insight into the structure of other co-operatives around the world.
Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board — Canada: The Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board recognized the need for educational approaches to adapt in order to engage with its digital-savvy learners. From eLearning to professional learning to blended learning, the Board has grown its eLearning program from 27 teachers and 852 students in 2015-2016 to 77 teachers and over 2,500 students in 2018-2019; that’s almost a 300 percent growth in just three years.
St. Petersburg College — USA: Together with D2L, the college created Faculty Tools — a Brightspace customization designed to help faculty easily identify and quickly communicate with struggling students. Faculty Tools helps streamline the processes faculty do every day to find struggling students in order to help get the students back on track. Faculty Tools is available to St. Petersburg course instructors on the course home page, and includes four tabs: Grade Check, Last Login, Student Persona, and Grade Preview. The college’s internal data shows that the tool is having a significant impact on student success and retention efforts.
Victoria University — Australia: In 2018, Victoria University introduced the Block Model for its first-year students. This is an Australian first, has been highly successful and acclaimed, and is fully supported by Brightspace. Brightspace allows for automation of site creation with copied content from dedicated unit master spaces; supports checklists, rubrics, attendance data, and grades; enables automatic grades transfer to the student management system; and provides analytics dashboards using Datahub to inform unit review. The University’s data suggests the implementation has increased student pass rates, increased student grades, and supported student retention.
“When I founded D2L nearly 20 years ago, there was no way to know what our learning platform would eventually become. But we had dreams — we wanted to help the world get smarter,” said John Baker, CEO of D2L. “Today, almost two decades later, we like to say that our goal is nothing less than changing the way the world learns — and it is encouraging to have partners like our five award winners helping us accomplish that mission.”
ABOUT BRIGHTSPACE
Brightspace is a cloud-based learning platform that makes online and blended learning easy, flexible, and smart. Brightspace is a quantum leap beyond traditional Learning Management System (LMS) – it is easy to drag-and-drop content to create engaging courses, supports all mobile devices, has industry-leading up-time, and is built with accessibility in mind for all learners. Plus, Brightspace enables the future of learning with a gaming engine, adaptive learning, video management, intelligent agents, templated interactives for course design, full support for outcomes or competency-based learning, and actionable learning analytics.
D2L’s Brightspace was recently named the #1 LMS in Higher Ed by Ovum Research and #1 in Adaptive Learning by eLearning Magazine. In addition, Aragon Research included D2L in its highly coveted Hot Vendors In Learning list.
ABOUT D2L
D2L believes learning is the foundation upon which all progress and achievement rests. Working closely with clients, D2L has transformed the way millions of people learn online and in the classroom. Learn more about D2L for schools, higher education and businesses at www.D2L.com.
PRESS CONTACT
Erin Mills, Vice President Marketing, D2L Ltd, pr@d2l.com
© 2019 D2L Corporation.
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. Please visit D2L.com/trademarks for a list of D2L marks.