By: Susan McInnes, Senior Product Manager
End of Life Date: June 2029
D2L is announcing the intent to begin the End of Life (EOL) process for Learner Experience in Brightspace. This article outlines what is changing, the planned timeline, and how customers can prepare.
As of June 2029, Brightspace will offer only the New Content Experience (NCE) for our customers. Over the past several years, we have continued to invest in NCE, making it the recommended content experience in Brightspace. We continue to add new capabilities and enhancements to provide a modern, consistent experience for creating, managing, and completing course content.
Related announcement: D2L is also announcing the intent to End of Life Classic Content on the same timeline. Classic Content and Learner Experience are separate experiences and may impact different customers. If your organization uses Classic Content, see the Intent to EOL Classic Content announcement for additional information.
What is Learner Experience?
Learner Experience (also known as New Learner Experience, or Sequence Viewer) is an alternative view for learners to access course content in Brightspace. It provides learners with a view of course content that is different from instructors and focuses on providing an immersive reading experience for navigating and consuming course materials.
Learner Experience is optionally enabled using the config variable d2l.Tools.Content.NewLearnerExperience
If your organization is not using Learner Experience, this announcement does not require any action.
Why are we making this change?
New Content Experience (NCE) provides a modern experience that is consistent for both instructors and learners, and is the focus of ongoing innovation in Brightspace.
By focusing future enhancements on a single content experience, D2L can continue delivering improvements while providing a more consistent experience across Brightspace.
The recent release of the Immersive View in NCE allows minimal impact to workflows learners are already used to, while aligning the view seen by both instructors and learners for better instructor provided support and guidance for the learners in their course.
What is the Impact and Transition plan?
Learner Experience will continue to be available throughout the End of Life transition period.
If your organization is currently using Learner Experience, we recommend evaluating the learner view in NCE in a test environment or pilot course. This announcement provides advance notice so that administrators and instructors can begin planning their transition at a pace that works for their organization.
All existing course content remains available, allowing organizations to transition without rebuilding or copying course materials. The change only affects how learners access and navigate that content.
Additional documentation and transition resources are available in the Brightspace Community:
https://community.d2l.com/brightspace/kb/articles/33329
The following timeline outlines the planned milestones for the Learner Experience EOL process. Additional details will be communicated in advance of each milestone.
Date | Milestone | Description |
|---|
October 2026 | Intent to EOL Announcement | D2L announces the intent to retire Learner Experience and recommends that customers begin planning their transition to NCE. |
June 2029 | End of Use | Learner Experience reaches End of Use and is no longer available. Customers should complete their transition before this date. |
FAQ
- What is changing?
- Immediately, nothing is changing. This announcement communicates D2L’s intent to remove support for Learner Experience in June 2029.
- We recommend that organizations currently using Learner Experience begin planning a pilot or rollout for an upcoming school term.
- There are resources available to help with this planning here: Planning your move to Content and Immersive View.
- How do I know whether my organization is using Learner Experience?
- Administrators can determine which content experience is in use by reviewing the d2l.Tools.Content.NewLearnerExperience configuration variable. If you are unsure, contact your D2L Account Team.
- Is Learner Experience the same as Classic Content?
- No. Learner Experience and Classic Content are separate experiences.
- Learner Experience provides an alternative experience specifically for learners accessing course content, while Classic Content is the original content authoring and management experience in Brightspace.
- For details about Classic Content, see the Intent to EOL Classic Content announcement.
- Can I switch back to Learner Experience during the transition period?
- Yes. During the transition period, administrators can continue to configure courses to use Learner Experience. Note that changing the configuration affects all learners within the selected course.
- What happens after June 2029?
- After June 2029, Learner Experience will no longer be available. Courses previously configured to use Learner Experience will use NCE for learners instead. All course material will remain available; only the user experience changes.
- Will D2L continue adding new features to Learner Experience?
- No new functionality is being added to Learner Experience.
- During the transition period, D2L will continue to address critical defects that significantly impact customers.
- What about the naming of New Content Experience?
- Going forward, the New Content Experience will be referred to as Content.
- This decision was made since New Content Experience has been around for over 10 years and is no longer new. It is the preferred content experience in Brightspace.