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 higher education institutions 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 institutions that operate on academic terms or semesters. 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.
In this example, the assumption is that the transition to NCE is targeted for the Fall Term.
9–12 Months Before Launch (Previous Fall Term)
Discover phase. In this phase, institutions need to understand how Classic Content is actually used, where pain points exist, and who is most impacted. This phase ensures the transition is grounded in reality, not assumptions.
Discover Phase: Governance, Strategy, and Sponsorship
□ Confirm institutional decision and purpose to ensure clarity and understanding.
□ Identify executive/academic sponsor
□ Define success metrics (adoption, satisfaction, support load, student experience)
Discover Phase: Understand Impact
□ Conduct stakeholder consultations (faculty, students, instructional design, support)
□ Review current Classic Content use, barriers, and patterns
□ Identify courses/programs with higher complexity or risk
□ Analyze help desk trends to anticipate impacts
6–9 Months Before Launch (Late Fall/Early Winter)
Explore phase. In this phase, assess how the New Content Experience changes day-to-day work, instructional design, and support requirements. It allows the institution to identify benefits, gaps, risks, and readiness issues before committing to a rollout approach.
Explore Phase: 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
- Incentive staff to consult the Community articles!
- Attend one of our webinars!
- Create a knowledge drops campaign highlighting the features that are most interesting to your stakeholders
- Determine the support or training required as a result
□ Evaluate instructional design implications (templates, navigation flow, module structure)
Areas to assess:
- How module structure, content chunking, and visual flow might evolve
- Whether the new interface 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
- Share examples of well-designed NCE courses as models
- Update institutional documentation and templates to remove Classic terminology before rollout
□ Identify risks and create mitigation strategies
Risks may include:
- Faculty resistance due to comfort with Classic
- Confusion if some courses use Classic while others use NCE
- Confusion about feature differences
- Increased support ticket volume during transition periods
- Student frustration if navigation becomes inconsistent (some courses use Classic and some courses use NCE)
Suggested mitigation strategies:
- Clear timelines and expectations to avoid uncertainty
- Phased or pilot rollout instead of sudden enforcement
- Strong communication that is consistent and repeated multiple times
- Identify NCE champions among faculty to build trust and credibility
- Training aligned to real teaching tasks, not just “interface tours.” Working sessions are a great asset!
- Ensuring help desk and instructional designers are trained ahead of the faculty
- Gathering feedback and adjusting before institution-wide rollout
- Create strong internal support channels
□ Provide early demos and sandbox access for faculty
Hands-on exploration creates confidence and reduces anxiety. Some suggestions that can be done during this phase include:
- Run demonstrations for faculty groups and governance committees
- 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): Use early communication to prepare audiences and create engagement
□ “NCE is coming” awareness messaging to faculty and leadership
4–6 Months Before Launch (Mid Winter/Early Spring)
Plan phase. It translates understanding into action. This phase aligns rollout timing with academic cycles, defines responsibilities, prepares training and communication materials, and ensures that support teams are ready.
Plan Phase: Structure the Rollout
□ Define a roll-out model to introduce NCE, and decide how detailed you'd like to make it:
Plan Phase: 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. - Pilot Courses
Start small: pilot a program or selected programs in a summer term (example) to reduce risk and learn from experience. - Training & Enablement
Provide sandboxes, workshops, on-demand resources, office hours, and departmental support. - Champions
Engage identified champions to model adoption, support peers, and showcase early successes. - (Optional) Phased Rollout Period
If necessary, allow an opt-in window where appropriate to build confidence, collect insights, and refine approaches. Note: Avoid mixed experiences within the same term. If phasing, phase by program or cohort, rather than allowing instructors to opt in independently. Consistency is a learner-experience strategy. - Final Changeover
Set a clear institutional adoption date. Transition remaining courses, retire Classic-based guidance, and update all documentation.
Plan phase: tasks suggested
□ Create communication roadmap (clear state “What, Why, When, How”)
We’ve put together some helpful Communication Resources for Education 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 faculty and learner views, and convenient one-page sheets. We hope these tools make your experience smoother and more enjoyable!
□ Define dates aligned with your academic cycle
□ Determine if pilot courses or programs are required, and which ones they will be (and when)
□ Develop training resources:
- 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
□ Recruit faculty and/or instructional designers champions
□ Develop faculty training resources (task-based, scenario-driven, not just interface tours)
□ Prepare messaging for all internal stakeholders and documentation
□ Prepare student-facing messaging and orientation materials
□ Update documentation, templates, quality assurance and accessibility standards
□ Train help desk and instructional designers before faculty rollout
2–3 Months Before Launch (Late Spring/Pre-Summer)
Validate phase. This phase reduces risk, builds confidence, and allows adjustments before impact is widespread. It ensures the institution is ready before the full transition.
Validate Phase: Test and Learn
□ Launch limited pilot (preferably summer or light term) - if applicable
□ Establish feedback channels for faculty and students to be used by people involved in the pilot course(s)
□ Adjust documentation and support materials based on real use case learnings
□ Confirm readiness before broader rollout
Validate Phase: Communications triggered
□ Clear “When, What, Why, How” messaging to faculty
□ Notify students that a change is coming next major term
1–2 Months Before Launch (Mid–Late Summer)
The transition plan is ready and has been thoroughly checked. Now, we're getting ready to put it into action!
Execution Preparation
□ Enable NCE in advance of semester start (Fall semester)
□ Ensure there is no inconsistency within courses. Example: courses of the same program with different content experiences.
□ Ensure all faculty are trained on the NCE features and workflows
□ Clearly signal when Classic will no longer be supported
□ Ensure faculty prepare courses for the next term in NCE
□ Finalize documentation
□ Retire Classic-only materials
Communication and Change Reinforcement
□ Use multi-channel communication:
- Brightspace announcements
- Faculty meetings
- Academic newsletters
- Institutional teaching & learning sites
- Student-facing communications
□ Promote transition champions and early success stories
□ Provide ongoing reminders of final cutover timelines
Launch Term (Fall Term Begins)
Execution
□ Consistent experience across all courses
□ No mid-term toggling between experiences
□ Ensure rapid response capability from Support channels within the first 2–3 weeks of the term
After Launch (Fall term and onwards)
Adoption & Sustainment
After executing the transition plan, it’s essential to ensure adoption by emphasizing that the transition is intentional, supported, and sustainable.
Support & Enablement
□ Ensure that it's available:
• Sandboxes for faculty
• Quick guides and videos
• Office hours
• Drop-in support sessions
□ Maintain continuous feedback loops
□ Ensure that there is no Classic Content guidance/materials to avoid confusion
Measure and Sustain
□ Suggested tracking measurements:
• Adoption
• Support ticket trends
• Faculty satisfaction
• Student navigation feedback
□ Update training materials based on findings
□ Embed NCE into faculty onboarding and Professional Development materials.
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).