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Brightspace Now Accessible to BMCC Faculty and Staff

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Dear Faculty, 

We are writing to follow up on the email from EVC Wendy Hensel regarding the Brightspace transition process (see full text of that email below). 

At this point, all faculty should have access to the Brightspace system. You can log into Brightspace at https://brightspace.cuny.edu/ using your CUNYfirst (@login.cuny.edu) credentials. 

CUNY is in the process of migrating your Blackboard courses from Summer 2022 onward. You should already have access to copied course content from Summer 2023 and possibly Spring 2023. Note that content associated with BMCC-specific third party tools such as VoiceThread or Hypothesis will not (yet) work. You also have the ability to create practice courses that you can use to learn about the functionality of Brightspace.

You have been enrolled in a Brightspace Resource Course, a self-paced course that introduces the basics of Brightspace. CUNY plans to begin offering Brightspace training sessions in January 2024, but has not yet provided a schedule. We will be in touch with the schedule as soon as we receive it from CUNY. BMCC will also be offering workshops to complement the foundational CUNY Brightspace workshop series. These workshops will guide you through the process of preparing your courses and will deepen your understanding of teaching and learning opportunities in Brightspace. We are also beginning to work with liaisons from each department at BMCC, who will serve as departmental resources.

We are continuing to develop the Brightspace Transition at BMCC website. If you missed the recent introduction to Brightspace webinars, you can view the recordings on our site.

Feel free to reach out to us at lmstransition@bmcc.cuny.edu if you have any questions. Wishing you a happy and restorative winter break!

Best,
Gina, Tom, and Gail

Gina Cherry, CETLS Director
Gail Fernandez, Acting Associate Dean of Faculty
Tom Harbison, Director of Digital Education

A point of clarification sent by Tom:

Faculty will continue to utilize Blackboard through the Spring 2024 term. Brightspace is not being used for BMCC courses until Summer 2024, at which point courses will no longer be created and enrolled in Blackboard, and this will instead happen in Brightspace. For a full timeline, please see this Timeline page on our Brightspace transition website.

Therefore, the plan for this spring is for faculty to teach with Blackboard while preparing their summer/fall courses in Brightspace. We plan to send more information by next week about options for Brightspace training and support starting in January. 

Feel free to reach out to us at lmstransition@bmcc.cuny.edu if you have any questions.

Best,

Tom

MESSAGE FROM EVC HENSEL CIRCULATED AT BMCC 12/1/23:

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

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