Global learning technology leader D2L announced today that Michigan Virtual has selected D2L’s Brightspace platform as its learning management system.

“We’ve always used a learning management system (LMS), but we wanted to move to an innovative and cloud-hosted platform in order to better serve our students and educators,” said Joseph Freidhoff, vice president of Michigan Virtual. “After extensive testing of multiple platforms, we chose Brightspace because its flexibility supports how we teach our students. We’re excited and eager to give new tools to our instructors and mentors to save them time and more easily communicate, in order to better support all our virtual learners.”

According to Michigan Virtual, Brightspace offered several advantages to meet their needs in better serving students and assisting educators, including:

• Flexibility: Brightspace serves students across multiple grades and allows them to move through courses at their own pace and schedule. This includes supporting multiple term start-and-end dates, as Michigan allows districts to have different dates.
• Personalization: The ease of personalization is important to students and instructors managing multiple cohorts of students. This includes providing reports that will allow mentors of both students and instructors to better track and support progress.
• A True Partnership: Both Michigan Virtual and D2L are committed to continual improvement and ensuring quality results – an alignment that will greatly benefit the students and educators served by this partnership.

“Michigan Virtual is a recognized leader and innovator in online learning, so we are especially excited to be partnering with them,” says Lee Poteck, vice president, education at D2L. “It’s a great fit, and both companies are already benefiting from this collaboration.”

As a non-profit and research-based organization, Michigan Virtual works to ensure that courses and educators are focused on providing quality, integrated courses that work together for the overall success of student learning and comprehension. To do so, Michigan Virtual uses a third party (Quality Matters) to evaluate course designs against research-based online course design standards that lead to student success. This partnership with D2L will strengthen Michigan Virtual’s ability to provide quality services and successful results to educators and learners.