Students teach lecturers how to switch to Brightspace

Assunta Lupsa (22) is one of 20 student-assistants helping Hanze lecturers and students switch from Blackboard to Brightspace.

‘Bye, bye, Blackboard. Indeed, that sounds funny and it’s true, of course. As of September 1, Blackboard will be assigned to history at Hanze. It has been the digital educational platform for 20 years or so, so Brightspace will certainly take some getting used to for lecturers.’

For students as well, I suppose…

‘Sure, but to a far lesser degree. In general, students handle IT changes more easily. They have been used to them from a young age. An example: I’ve had lecturers who didn’t know what the eyelet meant whereas students immediately recognised this symbol.

‘Students use Blackboard and Brightspace less extensively than lecturers. They only use it to look up the courses they need. Lecturers have to place those courses on the platform, which is a different matter altogether. It’s not only new courses… they also have to learn how to put their old Blackboard courses on Brightspace.’

A job that can be stressful, it seems to me.

‘Not to everyone. In every school there are a few handy colleagues who can lend a hand. These are contact persons for Blackboard. From now on, you can consult them for Brightspace as well. It will be quite a transition, Hanze has worked with Blackboard for some twenty-odd years.’

Why is the Hanze actually quitting Blackboard?

‘I don’t know the details of that, it has to do with the tender. What I can say is that the look-and-feel of Brightspace is friendlier. You feel more welcome there. Blackboard looks a bit primitive in comparison.’

How come you know so much about it?    

‘That’s part of being a student-assistant, we had to learn it ourselves first. Some of the questions lecturers and students ask us now, we ourselves have asked earlier. That’s kind of useful.’

It’s kind of funny that you students are now sort of teaching lecturers.

‘The world turned upside-down, yes. You get used to that pretty quickly. For me anyway, because I have been instructing Physiotherapy students for three years. With teaching lecturers I had no experience before, but in practice there’s hardly any difference.’

You sound relaxed, as if it will all work out.    

‘In the beginning we were afraid that people would panic or get very stressed. But that didn’t happen. I should add that that thus far we have been dealing with forerunners, the enthusiasts. That was a small group. From April onwards, considerably more people will join. So it will be a lot busier and there will be more tension, because everyone will have to learn to work with Brightspace, even the lecturers who are less digitally literate.’

The planning is pretty tight, everyone must be able to work with Brightspace at September 1.  

‘There is no other way, it has to be done. All I can say is that we are ready to help. But let me reassure everyone: it will work and Brightspace is much easier to deal with than Blackboard.’

From Blackboard to Brightspace, what’s in store?

The first Brightspace group was trained in February. Currently, one Brightspace-course is running in every Hanze school.

In April, all lecturers will have access to Brightspace. The schools’ key-users (the contact persons, as Assunta calls them above) will organise training sessions for this purpose.

On 22 April, a larger group of lecturers will start using Brightspace. If they want to prepare for it now or in the near future, 20 student-assistants are ready to support them. The student-assistants can help them set up their Brightspace courses. Students can also approach the student-assistants.

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