The message below was sent by Ruru Rusmin to all SPS faculty to highlight key points and provide details for the SPS community:
Dear SPS Community,
Earlier you received the latest LMS Transition update from Executive Vice Chancellor Wendy Hensel. We would like to highlight 5 key points, followed by details that pertain to SPS:
The university-wide Brightspace environment is complete; SPS and other Group 1 and 2 schools are working on customizing their local nodes/organizations.
Migration of Summer 2023 courses is on track for Dec. 15 completion.
All faculty now have access to Brightspace and can create practice course sites.
Faculty workshops from Central will begin in January
We will be able to customize our college and course navigation menus (navbars)
Ref #2, SPS dev site migration: In addition to the migration of summer 2023 courses (content only), SPS is working with the CUNY team to migrate our dev sites. We plan to migrate our 3-, 7-, and 10-week dev sites in January 2024, and our 15-week dev sites in April 2024. Please note the migration of 3/7/10-week dev sites begins January 15; anything added or changed after January 15 in these Blackboard dev sites will not be captured in their migration to Brightspace.
Ref #3, Brightspace practice sites: Faculty and staff can now access the new LMS at brightspace.cuny.edu. Faculty can create practice sites with two limitations: practice sites may not include SPS-specific tools like VoiceThread, Digication, and Panopto, and faculty cannot enroll students despite the default text in the widget. Staff cannot create practice sites, but are welcome to reach out to us if they would like to set up practice sites for their unit. Student access is scheduled for May 2024.
Ref #4, Training and Support: We encourage SPS faculty and staff to take advantage of common resources such as the Brightspace Resource Course they are automatically enrolled in, the CUNY Brightspace Basics workshop series starting in January, and the Brightspace Community. We are working on our own SPS Brightspace Essentials Mini-Course for Faculty, which will launch in December 2023.
More information and questions: Please visit the CUNY Transition FAQ page as well our own SPS Transition Site. If your question isn’t answered or you would like to contact us, please don’t hesitate to email the SPS Transition team at brightspace@sps.cuny.edu.
Best, Ruru
—- Ruru Rusmin Assistant Dean of Faculty Development and Instructional Technology CUNY School of Professional Studies 15 Years of Leading Online Education at CUNY
The message below was sent from EVC Wendy Hensel to all CUNY Faculty on November 28, 2023:
Colleagues,
I hope that you all had a wonderful, restful holiday weekend with your family and friends. I am writing to provide you with an update on our system-wide transition to Brightspace D2L, our new Learning Management System (LMS). I am pleased to report that the transition is gaining momentum in key areas, and that new faculty resources are now available to everyone.
A. Update on Course Migration
First and most critically, the central Brightspace environment is now complete. In short, that means that colleges in Transition group #1 (BMCC, SLU, SPS, Hostos, John Jay, Medgar Evers, and Queens) are able to begin customizing their Brightspace environment (e.g., personalizing it to the college’s identity and preferences for the navigation bar, widgets, etc.). As you may know, we experienced some delays in our course migration as a result of issues on the D2L management side. Fortunately, D2L has resolved these issues, and we are back on our anticipated schedule. The initial migration of courses from Summer 2023 will be completed by December 15 for transition groups #1 and #2 (Baruch, Bronx, Guttman, Kingsborough, City Tech, Queensborough, and York). Once that occurs, instructors can begin working in their courses to update them for delivery in Summer 2024.
Course migration for transition group #3 (City College, SPH, CSI, and Hunter) will be done in fall 2024 with courses being taught in Brightspace in spring 2025. Transition group #4 (Brooklyn, Journalism, Graduate Center, Law, LaGuardia, Lehman, and Macaulay) will follow with course migration in spring 2025 and course delivery in Brightspace in summer 2025.
B. Update on Support and Training for Faculty
There are many ways for faculty to begin preparing for the transition now. As of today, all faculty have access to Brightspace to create practice sites in the LMS, allowing faculty to learn and play in Brightspace with access to the tools and features CUNY has implemented at this stage of the transition. Instructions for creating a practice site can be found on the LMS transition website. The website also is being updated regularly to include recorded training sessions, archived communications, and our progress. Faculty have access to support provided by D2L through chat, email, and phone on a 24/7, 365 day/year basis.
In addition to these resources, Faculty in transition groups #1 and #2 are enrolled in the Brightspace Resource Course for Instructors. This self-paced training introduces the basics of course building, assignments, and quizzes, as well as resources to get started. Faculty will see the course in the dashboard when logging in at brightspace.cuny.edu. Faculty in transition groups #3 and #4 will be enrolled in fall 2024 and January 2025 respectively.
Brightspace Basics, a 4-workshop series, will be offered beginning in January and continuing through the start of the Fall 2024 semester for transition groups #1 and #2. Workshops will cover the following topics: Getting Started in Brightspace, ABC’s of Content, Engaging Learners, and Assessing Learning. Workshop dates will be published shortly. Additional workshops will be scheduled for transition groups #3 and #4. Working with Migrated Courses, an asynchronous workshop, will be available in spring 2024 to support faculty as they prepare their migrated courses for their go-live semester.
I encourage everyone to explore the extensive resources, including self-guided training, found on the web-based Brightspace Community. This resource can also be accessed by clicking the “Brightspace Help” in the upper left corner of the top navigation bar in Brightspace. All Brightspace training is voluntary but highly recommended.
C. Listening to Your Concerns
As we said at the beginning of this project, it is important that we hear from faculty and work in tandem to ensure the success of the transition to Brightspace. Based on input from numerous stakeholder groups, including the LMS Transition Advisory Team, USS, CTL Council, and the UFS FGL, the course navigation bar will be configured as fully editable, with the default navigation recommended by D2L. Colleges will be able to modify the D2L default to a campus-specific one and edit their Brightspace homepages as desired. Instructors likewise will be able to modify the navigation bar in their courses.
We have also heard some concerns raised about intellectual property and data ownership. I want to assure you that neither is at risk in our contract with D2L. The RFP to which D2L responded specified the following: The contractor’s solution must affirm CUNY’s ownership of data and faculty member ownership of their own intellectual property. As has always been true, the intellectual property of faculty using D2L will be governed by CUNY’s Intellectual Property Policy (cuny.edu).
D. Thank You
I close with thanks to the LMS Transition Team, UFS, and all who are involved in this significant project. We appreciate your partnership and look forward to a smooth rollout as we go forward. I will update you as new information becomes available.
Best,
Wendy
Wendy F. Hensel Executive Vice Chancellor and University Provost City University of New York 205 East 42nd Street, 18th Floor New York, NY 10017 646.664.8075
As you know, CUNY will be transitioning to the Brightspace Learning Management System (LMS) over the next two years, and SPS will be delivering courses on Brightspace starting Summer 2024. This presents OFDIT with an opportunity to reflect on the effectiveness of our faculty onboarding programs, including the Blackboard Basics self-paced course, the Preparation for Teaching Online Workshop, and our Faculty Peer Mentoring Program. We will use your input as we review these programs and redesign them for your future colleagues.
When you have a few minutes, please fill out this 5-10 minute survey. Your insights are invaluable and will directly impact how we revise these programs over the coming months. The survey will close November 30, 2023.
The core staff managing the transition at SPS have been working with D2L and CUNY CIS to set up our SPS Brightspace organization within the CUNY-wide platform. We have been exploring how to manage courses and users, and have been testing the third-party applications we use at SPS (Panopto, VoiceThread, Digication, etc.).
The CUNY LMS Transition team is making progress on providing access for faculty and staff to explore the Brightspace platform. Once you have access, you will be able to work in practice course sites so that you can get some hands-on experience with Brightspace. The course migration test from Blackboard to Brightspace is also in process. The university plan is to migrate past course content, and SPS has also requested migration of our course development sites.
In the meantime, the OFDIT team is preparing training resources tailored to SPS, while the CUNY team still has a few more sessions of the CUNY Brightspace Demo and Q&A workshops scheduled:
Finally, we share with you the following message from the CUNY University Faculty Senate.
Dear Colleagues, As part of its responsibilities for this academic year, the University Faculty Senate’s Library and Information Technology Committee (UFS-LIT) is charged with tracking the transition to the new Learning Management System (LMS), Brightspace. In preparation for our December 5th UFS Plenary meeting, where we will be meeting with the LMS transition team at CUNY, we are trying to gather feedback from the faculty regarding the transition to Brightspace. Please complete this short form to share any questions or concerns you have about the LMS transition by Friday, November 17th.
Have you wondered what our new learning management system (LMS) will look like? On Oct. 18, the CUNY LMS Transition Team offered the community a first look. Along with our Brightspace partners, the Team provided an overview of the Brightspace learning environment, its functionalities, and features. At a high level, the webinar showed us how our new platform will engage in teaching and learning in the digital realm. Faculty will find the familiar classroom tools like assignments, quizzes, and discussions, but also new ways to design and build online courses and a special focus on accessibility features.
All are welcome to view the session recording to get your first look!
