By Natalia Dias, Transition Services Consultant
Any transition process usually follows four phases: Discover, Explore, Plan and Validate. In this article, we propose a checklist and timeline for corporate organizations to transition from Classic Content to the New Content Experience (NCE). This way, we can ensure that everything is well-prepared, aligned, and embraced by everyone involved.
To build this timeline, we are considering corporate organizations that do not operate on academic terms, semesters or years. Timelines are illustrative and can be adjusted based on your calendar, but they reflect best-practice pacing to avoid frustration, support readiness, and minimize disruption.
If you have courses or programs that are offered on a year-based basis, such as fiscal years, you can follow the suggested timeline for K-12 institutions.
If you have courses or programs that are offered on terms or semesters, you can follow the suggested timeline for Higher Ed institutions.
If you have courses that are offered continuously throughout the year, the best practice is to establish a cohort-based cutover. The principle is to never change the content experience for an active learner.
In this example, the assumption is that the courses or programs are offered continuously throughout the year, with no specific end date. The full transition to NCE will happen after the last learner completes the last course using the Classic experience.
12–16 weeks before cutover
Discover phase: the purpose is to understand the course's reality before engaging with the content experience.
Governance, Strategy, and Sponsorship
□ Confirm organization decision and purpose to ensure clarity and understanding.
□ Identify executive/academic sponsor
□ Define success metrics (adoption, satisfaction, support load, student experience)
Understand Impact
□ Conduct stakeholder consultations (instructors, staff, instructional designers, learners and support teams)
□ Review current Classic Content use, barriers, and patterns
□ Identify courses/programs with higher complexity or risk
□ Review support history and learner friction points
Key outcomes
□ Understand courses' demand and the best period for a new cohort
10–12 weeks before cutover
Explore phase: assess how NCE affects courses, review feature differences, and understand the benefits and risks.
Assess NCE features
□ Review the feature comparison article in the Community, and compare the most used Classic vs NCE workflows in your organization.
Key areas to analyze:
- What tasks become simpler?
- What behaves differently?
- What might need relearning?
- Are there currently beloved Classic features that behave differently or are surfaced differently?
Suggested actions:
- Create a side-by-side comparison with a focus on the tasks that your stakeholders raised
- Create documentation to highlight differences in the main workflows
- Encourage Instructional designers to attend one of our webinars and Community articles!
- Determine the support or training required as a result
□ Evaluate instructional design implications (templates, navigation flow, module structure, completion tracking)
Areas to assess:
- How module structure, content chunking, and visual flow might evolve
- Whether the new experience encourages better organization or different design choices
- Accessibility policies and standards
- Universal design considerations
Suggested actions:
- Review how existing course templates translate into NCE
- Update instructional design best-practices recommendations if needed
- Update institutional documentation and templates to remove Classic terminology before rollout
□ Identify risks and create mitigation strategies
Risks may include:
- Stakeholders' resistance due to comfort with Classic
- Confusion about feature differences
- Increased support ticket volume during transition periods
- Learner frustration if navigation becomes inconsistent (some courses use Classic and some courses use NCE)
Suggested mitigation strategies:
- Clear timelines and expectations to avoid uncertainty
- Strong communication that is consistent and repeated multiple times
- Identify internal NCE champions to build trust and credibility
- Gathering feedback and adjusting before organization-wide rollout
- Create strong internal support channels
- Avoid mixed experiences for the same learner within the same program. If phasing, phase by program or cohort.
□ Provide early demos and sandbox access for instructional designers
Hands-on exploration creates confidence and reduces anxiety. Some suggestions that can be done during this phase include:
- Run demonstrations for specific groups (instructional designers, instructors, staff)
- Allow instructors and designers to test NCE in sandbox courses
- Use small pilots to learn what works and what doesn’t work for your institution
- If something is not working properly, raise a support case and share it with your CSM (Customer Success Manager)
- Validate assumptions before committing to full rollout
Early Communication (optional)
□ “NCE is coming” awareness messaging to instructors, designers and leadership
Key outcomes
□ Identified risks and mitigation strategies
□ Agreement on the cohort strategy and strategy for cutover. Note: Depending on the number of courses/programs, some parallel operations (i.e., some courses with Classic and some with NCE) are temporary and intentional.
8–10 weeks before cutover
Plan Phase: let’s design the controlled transition!
Structure the Rollout
□ Define cutoff date.
According to the scenario in your organization, assess:
- Programs or courses with the same cutoff date.
- Programs or courses with different cutoff dates based on the course/program length
- What is the desired timeline for all courses to be operating on the NCE?
□ Finalize communication plan: clear “What, Why, When, How” for instructors, instructional designers, and support teams.
□ Develop instructors' training resources (task-based, scenario-driven, not just interface tours)
- Which resources are required? (workshops, on-demand resources, hands-on meetings, office hours)
- Build sandboxes or safe spaces for testing
- Create supporting materials and/or articles and FAQs pages/channels
If opting for a pilot:
- Pilot with selected course offerings: You can enable the New Content Experience for specific programs or courses. For example, you can select a small program with a controlled audience.
□ Freeze structural changes in courses using Classic experience
□ Prepare NCE courses/ programs as the “new default” for future learners
□ Prepare messaging for all internal stakeholders and documentation
□ Update documentation, templates, quality assurance and accessibility standards
□ Recruit internal NCE champions
Suggested Rollout Plan
When it’s possible, an ideal transition timeline would include:
- Planning & Communication
Clearly define the 'When, What, Why, and How' of the transition and share it widely.
We’ve put together some helpful Communication Resources for Corporate in the Community to support you. These include friendly email templates, handy snippets that you can easily add to your knowledge base, clear images showing instructor and learner views, and convenient one-page sheets. We hope these tools make your experience smoother and more enjoyable!
- (Optional) Pilot Courses
Start small: (example) pilot a program or selected programs with a small cohort, to reduce risk and learn from experience. - Training & Enablement
Provide sandboxes, workshops, on-demand resources, office hours, and support. - Pilot & Champions
Engage identified champions to model adoption, support peers, and showcase early successes. - Final Changeover
Set a clear institutional adoption date. Transition remaining courses, retire Classic-based guidance, and update all documentation.
Key outcomes
□ A documented and approved transition plan
□ Training resources
□ Clear definitions:
- Which course(s)/program(s) stay in Classic and for how long
- Which course(s)/program(s) starts with NCE
- Overall timeline
- When to retire the courses operating with the Classic experience
4–6 weeks before cutover
Validate Phase: Ensure readiness before live learners start on NCE
Test and Learn
□ If opting for a pilot course/program: launch a limited pilot - if applicable
□ Establish feedback channels for instructors and students to be used by people involved in the pilot course(s)
□ Validate the NCE course with internal testers. Confirm:
- Accessibility
- Assessment behavior
- Analytics and reporting
□ Adjust documentation and support materials based on real use case learnings
□ Train instructors, facilitators, and support teams
□ Confirm readiness before broader rollout
□ Confirm all communication materials are live
Cutover date
Execution
□ Make NCE courses available for new learners
□ Maintain clear communication, disclosing the timeline for the remaining courses in the Classic experience.
□ Ensure there is no inconsistency within programs. Example: courses of the same program with different content experiences.
□ Finalize documentation and remove all Classic-related language
After every Classic cohort completes:
□ Retire Classic-only materials for the inactive courses/programs
Support & Enablement
□ Provide:
- Quick guides and videos
- Office hours
□ Ensure rapid response capability from Support channels, especially at the beginning of the transition
□ Maintain continuous feedback loops
Measure and Sustain
□ Suggested tracking measurements:
- Adoption
- Support ticket trends
- Instructor satisfaction
- Learner navigation feedback
□ Update training materials based on findings
□ Embed NCE into standards, onboarding, and documentation
Would you like to engage more with us? Join the Optimization Service Community Group to share ideas and learn tips from D2L’s Optimization Services team members (TAMs/LAMs/Learning Analytics/Transition Services).