By Natalia Dias, Transition Services Consultant
Learner Experience (also called New Learner Experience) is an alternative view for learners to access course content in Brightspace. It gives learners a different course view than instructors and focuses on an immersive reading experience for navigating and consuming course materials. The Learner Experience is optionally enabled by LMS administrators in Brightspace within the New Content Experience.
If you want to compare Brightspace’s different content experiences, this article has everything that you need: New Content Experience vs Classic Content in Brightspace: Understanding our Content Experiences - Brightspace
The New Content Experience (or just Content) offers a modern, accessible, and easy-to-navigate way for learners to access course materials. You can learn more about Content here: Content Experience Resources - Brightspace
Since July, as Content continues to evolve, we have introduced the Immersive view, an optional feature within the Content experience. The Immersive view provides a full-screen, distraction-reduced environment designed to optimize how learners read, interact with, and navigate through course materials. And just like the Learner Experience, the use of Immersive view is fully optional and will remain optional. It consolidates the Learner Experience (LX) focused reading capabilities directly into the modern Content tool. Please read the July Release Notes for details on how to enable it.
Important: The transition changes how content is presented, not the content itself: existing modules, topics, activities, links, and completion settings remain in place. No content migration or course rebuild is required.
So how can you take advantage of this new feature in your ongoing program and courses in Brightspace? Let’s create a transition plan!
Your roadmap to a smooth, successful transition
A successful transition is not only a configuration change. It is an opportunity to prepare instructors, learners, and support teams for a consistent and positive experience.
1. Understand your current use of Learner Experience
Start by identifying the courses, programs, and audiences that use Learner Experience today. Engage instructors, instructional designers, learner-support teams, and a small group of learners to understand what they value most about the current experience.
This discovery step helps focus communications and training on the changes that matter most to your community.
2. Choose the experience that best fits your learners
Decide whether to use the standard Content layout or enable Immersive View.
The standard Content layout is well-suited to learners who benefit from viewing the Table of Contents and the selected content item simultaneously. Immersive View is a helpful option for organizations that prefer a wider content area and a more focused content-reading experience.
Before making a broad decision, review both options with instructional design, accessibility, and learner support representatives.
3. Pilot before rolling out broadly
Use a small set of representative courses to test the chosen experience in a real teaching and learning context. A pilot might include courses with different structures, content types, and learner audiences.
During the pilot, ask instructors and learners to confirm that they can:
- Find modules, lessons, and topics easily.
- Resume work and navigate between content items.
- Understand completion indicators.
- Access files, links, media, and learning activities as expected.
- Use the experience effectively with their preferred browsers and assistive technologies.
Gather feedback through a short survey, office hours, or a dedicated support channel. Use the findings to refine guidance and determine whether any course-design recommendations are needed before the broader rollout.
4. Prepare communications and training
Clear communication helps learners feel confident when they encounter the updated interface. Clearly define the 'When, What, Why, and How' of the transition and share it widely.
Some examples of what you can provide:
- A short announcement explaining what, when, is changing and why.
- A learner quick-start guide with screenshots of the new navigation.
- A brief video or guided walkthrough for finding, opening, and progressing through content.
- Instructor guidance that explains the new learner view and answers common questions.
- Updated support documentation, knowledge-base articles, and orientation-course materials.
The main recommendation is to share information before the change takes effect and avoid introducing the new experience during the first week of a term or other high-activity period.
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!
5. Prepare your support teams
Ensure that help-desk staff, instructors, instructional designers, and administrators understand the key differences between Learner Experience and Content.
Suggested actions:
- Provide early demos.
- Give instructors and support teams an opportunity to explore the updated interface in a sandbox course.
- Prepare shared answers to common questions and clear escalation paths to provide consistent support from the first day of the transition.
6. Roll out and continue listening
Plan the rollout around your academic or operational calendar. Organizations may choose to begin with selected programs or terms before enabling the experience more broadly.
After rollout, continue monitoring:
- Learner and instructor feedback
- Support-ticket themes and volume
- Navigation-related questions
- Adoption across courses
Related resources
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).