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 K-12 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.
On this timeline, we are considering K12 organizations that operate on academic years. Timelines are illustrative and can be shifted based on your calendar, but they reflect best-practice pacing to avoid frustration, support readiness, and reduce disruption.
In this example, the assumption is that the transition to NCE is targeted for the Next School Year Start.
9–12 Months Before Launch (Early School Year)
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 rather than 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
□ Consult teachers, students, instructional designers and support teams. Anyone who could be affected by the transition.
□ Review current Classic Content use, barriers, and classroom workflows
□ Identify courses/programs with higher complexity or risk
□ Analyze help desk trends to anticipate impacts
6–9 Months Before Launch (Mid School Year)
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 were raised during consultations
- 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 main features
- 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
- Standard 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:
- Teachers' resistance due to comfort with Classic
- Confusion about feature differences
- Increased support ticket volume during transition periods
- Student frustration if the communication is unclear
Suggested mitigation strategies:
- Clear timelines and expectations to avoid uncertainty
- Strong communication that is consistent and repeated multiple times
- Identify NCE champions among staff and teachers 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 teachers
- Gathering feedback and adjusting before institution-wide rollout
- Create strong internal support channels
□ Provide early demos and sandbox access for teachers and staff
Hands-on exploration creates confidence and reduces anxiety. Some suggestions that can be done during this phase include:
- Run demonstrations for teachers and staff groups
- 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 teachers and staff
4–6 Months Before Launch (Late School Year/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 select a course during the summer break (for example) to reduce risk and learn from experience. - Training & Enablement
Provide sandboxes, workshops, on-demand resources, office hours, and departmental 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 templates, 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 teachers' and learners' 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 teachers and/or staff champions
□ Develop teacher training resources (task-based, scenario-driven, not just interface tours)
□ Prepare internal messaging and documentation
□ Prepare student-facing messaging and orientation materials
□ Update documentation, templates, quality assurance and accessibility standards
□ Train the help desk and staff before the teacher’s rollout
2–3 Months Before Launch (End of School Year)
Validade 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 over a short break) - if applicable
□ Establish feedback channels for teachers, staff 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 Increase
□ Clear “When, What, Why, How” messaging to teachers and staff
□ Confirm consistency expectations (no mid-year switching)
□ Notify students that a change is coming next year
Summer / Pre-Year Period
The transition plan is ready and has been thoroughly checked. Now, we're gearing up to put it into action!
Execution Preparation
□ Enable NCE before teachers and staff return for the new school year
□ Provide preparation time for teachers to build and review courses in NCE
□ Deliver Professional Development training and office hours focusing on the NCE workflows
□ Finalize documentation
□ Retire Classic-only materials
Communication and Change Reinforcement
□ Use multi-channel communication:
- Brightspace announcements
- School leadership, Teachers and staff meetings
- Student-facing communications
□ Promote change champions and early success stories
□ Provide ongoing reminders of final cutover timelines
School Year Launch
Execution
□ Ensure consistent experience across all courses
□ Support early weeks proactively
□ Promote champions and model classrooms
After School Year Launch
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 teachers and staff
- Quick guides and videos
- Office hours
- Drop-in support sessions
□ Maintain continuous feedback loops
□ Ensure rapid response capability from Support channels within the first 2–3 months of the school year
□ Ensure that there is no Classic Content guidance/materials to avoid confusion
Measure and Sustain
□ Suggested tracking measurements:
- Adoption
- Support ticket trends
- Teachers and staff satisfaction
- Student navigation feedback
□ Update training materials based on findings
□ Embed NCE into teacher 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).