What do you like best about D2L Brightspace?
What I like best about D2L is the ease of creating and managing a course, especially for instructors who want to get up and running quickly without heavy technical overhead. I also appreciate that most features are well supported by in‑platform help and documentation, which makes it easier to troubleshoot and self‑serve answers when questions come up. From an institutional perspective, having a dedicated Technical Account Manager (TAM) has been extremely valuable for continuity, support, and long‑term planning. Overall, D2L has been a stable and reliable platform for our university since we adopted it in 2012, and that longevity has helped build strong internal expertise and processes around it. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
What do you dislike about D2L Brightspace?
One of my main concerns is the pace and timing of platform changes. Changes are sometimes introduced with limited advance notice, which does not always provide institutions enough time to properly plan, test, update documentation, and communicate effectively with faculty and students. While individual changes may appear simple from a product perspective, they often have broader downstream impacts on support processes, training materials, and user expectations.
I also feel there is an opportunity to improve administrator‑focused resources, particularly videos and walkthroughs related to reporting and major upcoming changes. These types of resources would help administrators better understand not just how something works, but why it is changing and what the operational implications are.
Finally, I would like to see D2L engage more broadly with a larger group of universities earlier in the change process. Broader consultation would help ensure that proposed changes better reflect the diversity of institutional contexts and reduce unintended impacts on support teams and end users.
I would like D2L to place greater emphasis on listening to the institutions that actively use and support the platform. As customers who have invested significant time and resources into D2L, our feedback often reflects real operational and support realities that are difficult to capture through a Product Exchange submission alone.
As we work through implementing the New Content Experience, it’s clear that earlier and broader consultation with institutions would lead to a stronger end product. While the Product Exchange is a useful tool, it can feel limiting when feedback is reduced to individual feature requests rather than collaborative discussion. More direct engagement with universities during the design and planning stages would help ensure new experiences better align with instructional workflows, support capacity, and institutional change management needs.
I believe that if D2L incorporated more active listening and collaborative dialogue with a wider group of institutions, the New Content Experience—and future enhancements—would be an even better option for everyone. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.