The SUNY Oswego Digital Learning Environment (DLE) transition team, composed of staff from Extended Learning and Campus Technology Services (CTS), continues to make progress migrating the campus from Blackboard to Brightspace. As a reminder, the selection of Brightspace was finalized by SUNY and campus partners in fall 2021 with a system-wide implementation mandate.
As part of the first cohort of campuses to transition, all SUNY Oswego courses taught or supplemented with Blackboard will use Brightspace beginning in the fall 2022 semester. To begin the transition, some pilot courses will be taught in Brightspace over the summer 2022 semester.
Below is a summary of progress since the last campus communication on April 21.
Summer pilot
The first of the summer session pilot courses are about ready to launch for summer session 1 starting May 23. These are fully online courses and will open up to students the week of May 16.
In total, 21 faculty teaching 27 courses during the summer are part of the Brightspace pilot. All of them have attended SUNY training and are actively working in Brightspace to prepare their courses. Note that all other summer session courses will continue to be taught in Blackboard.
Students enrolled in summer semester pilot courses will gain access to Brightspace the week of May 16. Information regarding summer courses using Brightspace and how to access Brightspace will be shared in a future communication.
Brightspace transition for fall courses
As mentioned above, all fall 2022 semester courses will be taught in Brightspace.
Notes for faculty:
- All formal training is being done through the SUNY Center for Professional Development. If you have not received or registered for training yet, take the training path self-assessment and register. As part of Cohort 1, all SUNY Oswego faculty can participate in the training at any time. Multiple modalities are available (synchronous, asynchronous, scaled webinars, fireside chats).
- SUNY Oswego will supplement the formal training with Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching-sponsored spring breakout sessions with pilot faculty in May/June, office hours starting June 7, and basic workshops later in July/August for new faculty and adjuncts.
- Faculty can start preparing courses for migration. Of special note, please make sure any videos stored in Ensemble or directly in Blackboard are moved to Panopto or YouTube. Ensemble will be decommissioned June 30. Videos directly stored in Blackboard will not be migrated and cannot be stored directly in Brightspace.
- All faculty will gain access to Brightspace the week of May 16 when the full integration of the student information system data is completed.
- All fully online courses being taught in the fall 2022 semester will be automatically converted and migrated to Brightspace on May 27. Content will be migrated from the fall 2022 Blackboard course shell.
- For other course migrations, you can use the Fall 2022 Course Migration Request form to request your Blackboard course(s) get converted and migrated to Brightspace. You can also opt to start fresh in Brightspace in which you can get started at any time after May 16.
Notes for students:
- Students registered for summer pilot courses will gain access to Brightspace the week of May 16. To help avoid any confusion, students will be able to see all their summer courses in Blackboard including those being taught in Brightspace. Once the student clicks on a summer pilot course in Blackboard, they will automatically be taken to Brightspace. Students can also log in to Brightspace directly.
- All other students will be able to log in to Brightspace also the week of May 16, but may not see any courses until faculty have made them available in Brightspace.
- Training resources are being worked on and will be shared in a future communication.
Additional information
More detailed information regarding the SUNY DLE project is available from SUNY’s project website. SUNY Oswego also has a dedicated DLE website which will host further updates and support information.
You may also call or email the SUNY Oswego Help Desk with any questions and a ticket will be directed to the DLE team to answer.