Case Study: Mohawk College increases pass rates from 63% to 83% and boosts engagement with D2L Brightspace

A disenchanted high school student becomes an educator on a mission to make learning fun and engaging

Mohawk College professor Shaun Iles used D2L’s Brightspace to tackle a familiar problem: traditional, one-size-fits-all classes left students disengaged and instructors stretched thin. His goals were to inject play into learning, let students work at their own pace, make academic challenges rewarding, and keep communication and peer connection strong—all while reducing instructor workload.

Iles gamified his Sustainability course with gated modules, bonus rewards, short recorded lectures, discussion forums and social-media tools, and automated “Intelligent Agents” to handle routine tasks. The result: class size scaled from 30 to 160 with minimal extra instructor effort, withdrawal rates fell by 25%, pass rates rose from 63% to 83%, student feedback was strongly positive, and a Unity-based 3D simulator is being developed to deepen applied learning.

Mohawk College

Shaun Iles

Professor