Change can be difficult for some, and easy for others. But in most cases, it is hard. For example, during COVID-19 students and teachers had to rapidly switch to virtual methods of learning and teaching.
Meredith Salmon, a teacher from New Jersey, described the sudden switch perfectly: “One day we were [at] school, and the next day, the whole world was kind of flipped upside down.”
Just like that, this semester NAIT students were met with a new Learning Management System (LMS). I became a student in Fall 2023 and was already trying to figure out how my classes worked and where the library is—and believe me, I was not able to find the library for two whole days. I was so busy with everything else, I didn’t even know what happened with my life. One moment I was enjoying my life back in India, then I was coming to a new country with a completely different curriculum.
In Fall 2024, I discovered we have a new LMS platform and I had to get used to it. When I heard this, I was like, “what a drag.” It was a complete surprise for me as a student who joined before the summer break. I am a third semester student at NAIT and for the last two semesters I used Moodle, which was the main source I knew.
Moodle is a well-established LMS which was developed on Aug. 20, 2002, and NAIT has been using it for years. For me, Moodle had an easy interface and because I was a new student it was easy for me to get used to how we received messages. I also found it especially easy to access third party websites like Pearson and McGraw Hill.
If I had to describe Brightspace in one word it would be COMPLICATED. Of course, I didn’t think getting used to Brightspace would be that hard, but it is the change that bothered me. For half of my NAIT life, I got used to Moodle, and I do not want to learn another platform again. There have been times when in urgency I was not able to find the link to Pearson or even the PowerPoint presentation which the instructor was teaching. Although I think learning this new software is a drag, I feel like I cannot oppose such a big institution. Maybe they’re trying to better the life of the future students. What I know about Moodle could be just the tip of the iceberg. It could’ve had glitches students couldn’t see. In the end, we have to get used to Brightspace—let’s hope that NAIT is not going to shift to another platform any time soon.
Cover photo via D2L
