Best Of
Re: Community Updates
🏆 Community Spotlight 2024: Terri Brown 🏆
Say Hello to Terri Brown, Director of e-Learning at East Georgia State College. Terri was nominated for this Community Spotlight for her contributions to the 2024 Fusion Lab. Terri brings a unique perspective, having experienced Brightspace as a student, faculty member, and now administrator. She uses that insight to support her college community in powerful ways!
Her go-to Community resource? The Quiz Printer widget, which helps faculty quickly generate printable versions of final exams -- a small but mighty win for their organization!
Join the Conversation: Spotlight on D2L’s Instructional Design Advisory Committee
At D2L, we believe that the most impactful learning experiences are built through collaboration—not just between instructors and learners, but also among the professionals who design and support those learning moments behind the scenes.
That’s why we want to spotlight our Instructional Design Advisory Committee forum, which has been bringing together learning design professionals from across our Brightspace client community for years.
Who Is This For?
This committee is made up of an executive-level audience from our client institutions, including:
- Instructional Designers
- Content Developers
- Curriculum Designers
- Learning Experience and Educational Technology Specialists
If you play
a key role in shaping learning design at your institution, we would love to have you join the conversation.
What to Expect
Our quarterly meetings are peer-driven conversations about the real challenges, innovations, and evolving trends shaping instructional design today. You’ll join a community of thought leaders who share a passion for improving online learning experiences—and who want to help shape the future of education, together.
Each session is designed to provide:
- Peer-to-peer networking and open dialogue
- Insights into the evolving landscape of digital learning
- Collaborative discussions that inform D2L’s product roadmap and support offerings
Why Participate?
By contributing your voice to these meetings, you’ll not only gain new perspectives from colleagues across the sector—you’ll also have an opportunity to directly influence how D2L supports your work. Your feedback helps us understand the trends, challenges, and innovations you’re navigating, so we can better align our tools and services with your goals.
Discussion Topics May Include:
- Emerging uses of AI in learning design
- Instructional design best practices from across the field
- Accessibility in the Online Learning Space
- Gamification and engagement strategies
- Designing collaborative learning spaces
- Efficiency tips and workflows for course creation
- Guest speakers from D2L with insider insights
- Current trends in online learning and future directions
Let’s Design the Future—Together
We invite you to attend our next quarterly meeting and join a dynamic, thoughtful community committed to improving the way we teach and learn. Your expertise and input are invaluable to D2L as well as your peers across the industry.
📅 Stay tuned for our next meeting invitation. We hope to see you there!
If you have questions or want to know more, complete the linked Form.
🏆 Community Spotlight: Isadora Mok-Kulakova
Meet Izzy, the Online Learning Environment Lead at the Taylor Institute for Teaching and Learning, University of Calgary. She supports D2L Brightspace alongside other campus platforms like Zoom and YuJa, doing everything from troubleshooting and workshops to documentation and integrations. Izzy loves participating in Community Groups and usability testing, gaining insights from other higher ed users. She also helped launch the Did You Know? video series to support instructors with quick tips!
Learn more about our Community Champions
🏆 Community Spotlight: Mike Chung
Meet Mike, Manager of Learning Technology, working in the field of Educational Technology Administration. Mike’s go-to Brightspace Community resource is the Product Idea Exchange (PIE), which he regularly recommends to colleagues! As a community advocate, he supports innovation and encourages others to share their feedback to help shape future Brightspace developments.
Learn more about our Community Champions:
🏆 Community Spotlight: Travis Kramer
Meet Travis Kramer, the Learning Technology Manager at the Koehler Center for Teaching Excellence. Travis leads the administration, support, and continuous improvement of D2L Brightspace at Texas Christian University, while also providing training and instructional design guidance to faculty. He’s passionate about helping instructors enhance student learning—and often shares a favorite quote by Benjamin Franklin: “Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn.” His go-to Brightspace Community resource? The D2L Learning Center, which he calls a hidden gem for deepening product knowledge and best practices.
Learn more about our Community Champions:
Re: Release Notes Updates
The May 2025/20.25.05 Release Notes are now live and ready for review in all languages!
Also, the April 2025/20.25.04 Release Notes have been republished to include the following update:
The Grades – Access Quiz Feedback | New feature now includes a clarification about the visibility of the Completion Status column that appears in one of the images.
Re: Release Notes Updates
May 2025/20.25.05 Preview Release Notes are now live and ready for review!
Please note, this is only a preview for the upcoming Brightspace version, which we will begin to roll out on May 1, 2025.
All features described are subject to change before then.
Also, the April 2025/20.25.04 Release Notes have been republished to include the following change:
- Added a new announcement about new configuration variables for the Courses tool added to production environments of Brightspace.
- The LTI – Navigate from the LTI Advantage tab to a deployment | New feature has been renamed to LTI – Navigate to a deployment within a course from the LTI Advantage tab | New.
Re: API Use to upload Common Cartridge, convert, create offering
Hi James,
I hope you’re having a great week! Thank you for reaching out with your API question.
While the Valence API doesn't provide a single API call to upload a Common Cartridge ZIP, convert it, and create a course offering all at once, you can accomplish this in two steps:
- POST /d2l/api/lp/(version)/courses/ > This API will allow you to create a new course offering.
- POST /d2l/api/le/(version)/import/(orgUnitId)/imports > This API will do the import and handle the conversion of the Common Cartridge ZIP into your course structure.
Unfortunately, there isn't an API available that does both steps in one call. You will need to create the course first and then import the package into the course separately. For more details on these APIs and their parameters, please refer to the full list of available API calls in the Valence API documentation.
If you have any further questions about setting up these API calls or need assistance with their parameters, I’d recommend checking out our developer community platform for additional resources and support.
Let me know if you need any further clarification or assistance!
Isidora
Re: Can a Syllabus for a course/class be created directly in Brightspace?
Welcome to the Brightspace Community.
Sure! You may create your course syllabus straight from the Content tool.
- If you are using the Classic Content Experience, you can take the following steps to create a new file:
- Click Upload / Create
- Create File.
- If you are using the New Content Experience (Lessons):
`1) click 'Create new'
2) and then 'New Lesson'
- In either Content experience you are on, you will then be able to edit your syllabus using the Brightspace HTML tools as you wish.
I hope this is helpful.
Re: Release Notes Updates
April 2025/20.25.04 Preview Release Notes are now live and ready for review!
Please note, this is only a preview for the upcoming Brightspace version, which we will begin to roll out on April 3, 2025.
All features described are subject to change before then.
Also, the March 2025/20.25.03 Release Notes have been republished to include the following change:
- Updated Awards – Control the Certificate ID parameter for shared awards | Updated release note to clarify the before and after behavior.










