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Brightspace, Utrecht University's (ÀÖÓãºǫ́) new online learning environment, was used for the first time by a select group of lecturers and students during periods 1 and 2 of this academic year. To great satisfaction. Over period 2, lecturers gave Brightspace an average score of 7.9, students a few tenths lower. Good news, because from the new academic year onwards, every student and lecturer at ÀÖÓãºǫ́ will be working with this new Learning Management System (LMS).

For those not yet familiar with Brightspace: it is user-friendly, clear, and intuitive. That is what the research into teachers' and students' experiences with the new learning environment during its partial implementation in periods 1 and 2 shows. The research is led by Geertje Agricola from the Centre for Academic Teaching and Learning, Femke Kirschner from Educational Development & Training, Martijn Huijts and Madelein Nienkemper, both from the ITS Directorate. The latter two look at the user experience from their expertise, Femke and Geertje from their teaching and research perspectives. 

Besides praise, there are also areas for improvement according to both groups of users. According to the teachers, the functionalities in the field of student assessment are not always user-friendly. The support for these functionalities therefore deserves extra attention. 

Lecturers were very satisfied with the support from the faculty key users. The Brightspace support desks are not always found by lecturers. Meanwhile, the  where support is provided are more visible. You can recognise them by the banners and the student assistants providing support wear orange Brightspace T-shirts.

Brightspace is very nice to work with. The features always work so far.

Students are very satisfied with the functionalities in Brightspace and still have some additional wishes. The majority of students would like a fixed course format. In terms of support, students need little support. They know their way around Brightspace well.

Improvements implemented

The findings from the partial implementation will be used to refine and improve the entire Brightspace implementation process for all lecturers and students at Utrecht University. The project team will therefore continue to work with all the feedback provided by lecturers and students.

Incidentally, during the evaluation of period 1 of the partial implementation, the research team already collected a lot of experiences and feedback. This was used to implement areas for improvement. These were sometimes quick wins, sometimes bigger improvements. As an example: the location of a certain functionality in the navigation was easy to adjust. An improvement that took a bit more work: adding a widget in the system so that lecturers can introduce themselves and colleagues in the course in a simple way. The project team expects this widget to be available in April. 

Differences in users' wishes

Users sometimes have different wishes, making the feedback the research team receives somewhat contradictory. A good example is sending e-mail notifications. There are students and teachers who prefer to be notified of everything and there is a large group of users who want as few e-mail notifications as possible. So, what is the best solution? In this particular case, the project team chose to give users a lot of freedom in configuring e-mail notifications. That way, everyone can set up the notifications as is most comfortable for that particular user.

Wishes that deal with new functionalities cannot always be fulfilled. The project team shares these ideas with Brightspace's supplier. 

The switch to Brightspace

Testing with Brightspace will continue until the summer holidays. From the 2025-2026 academic year, every teacher and student at Utrecht University will be working in the new learning environment. Do you want to prepare for the switch to Brightspace? .