By Kate Tortolini

Roger Williams University is making the transition between the current academic platform, Bridges, and the new learning service Brightspace.

Bridges has been in use since 2010 on the Bristol campus, but after an evaluation of the platform, the decision was made by administration to switch to Brightspace. The Brightspace Learning platform has been in use at the Providence extension campus since 2012. With the transition to Brightspace, both the extension campus and main campus will use the same software.

Currently, a group of professors are a part of a piloteers team, working to ease the transition into the Bristol campus, completely changing platforms. These professors have been assigned to test Brightspace on one to two of their fall semester classes. This will allow us to analyze the differences between the two platforms and hopefully make it easier to adapt to the changes.

“Bridges was just getting tired. It had not kept pace with some of the technological advances,” said Joseph Roberts, professor and chair of political science. Roberts is one of the early pilots who was tasked with testing the new system. “I actually was on the pilot team when we switched to bridges, so I’ve been using it forever and a day. I can do anything I want to do without really thinking about how to do it or where the buttons and stuff are.” 

The group of piloteers work closely with the instructional design team in charge of the transition to help support one another in the transition. “All of the piloteers talk regularly,” Roberts said,  “We talk once a month or so. How are things going? What are you finding?” The piloteers work with one another to navigate the platform and understand its ins and outs. It is expected that the complete transition will leave some difficulty with keeping up with the change, so the pilots will be there to assist the faculty and students in the change.

The transition has not been seamless between the two platforms. ”What worked in bridges didn’t work the same way in Brightspace, and so I kind of got myself in a pickle and had to go back and reverse the steps.” The two programs have many differences, making it new to learn for everyone.

According to the RWU Brightspace Hub, Brightspace will be an improved platform for the students on the Roger Williams campus to use. It will provide support for RWU’s strategic priorities, access to assignments, as well as additional features that Bridges does not have, such as virtual classrooms, video assignments, multi-tool rubrics, and many more.

One of the new features within Brightspace is a mobile app. “The thing that I think students will ultimately come to appreciate a lot is there’s an app so you can do a lot of things on the app,” said Roberts. In his work with piloting a class in Brightspace this semester, he reports that his students have been using the app. “I don’t have the app, but all the students in my class do. They like it.”

Brightspace is widely used at other campuses, both in R.I. and Mass. When speaking with Tessa Izzo, a Sophomore at the University of Rhode Island, she spoke positively about the platform and its benefits. “I think it’s really good how it keeps everything very separated, but at the same time keeps it all very organized,” said Izzo. “Everything laid out on a schedule for you, that is good.” 

On the other hand, Brightspace may have some setbacks. As explained by Charlie Battel, a Junior at Wentworth Institute of Technology. “It’s hard for professors to navigate it,” said Battel. “Especially for some of the more seasoned professors who might not be as adapted to technology.” Alongside this, Roberts said, “There are things that they don’t like, but I think partly that’s… a reflection of comparing it to Bridges.”

The transition between the two platforms will continue through the winter intersession and the spring semester, following the transition in the fall of 2025. “They’re adding more people to a second group of pilot years, and so those of us who did it this fall will continue in the winter and the spring.” Roberts and the team of piloteers from this current semester will continue to move forward with their classes being from Bridges to completely onto Brightspace. “I think for the spring, all of my classes will be on Brightspace.”

All details surrounding the implantation of the new platform and the logistics for how it will look for students and faculty are still subject to change, according to the IT department. By the fall semester of 2026, the University will adopt Brightspace campus-wide.