Case Study: Harrisburg Area Community College (HACC) achieves seamless interdisciplinary faculty collaboration and doubled online evaluation completion rates with D2L Brightspace

Eight professors with wide-ranging expertise collaborate on an epic interdisciplinary course

HACC, Central Pennsylvania’s Community College (nearly 21,000 students), launched an ambitious interdisciplinary undergrad course—Zombies in Contemporary Culture—bringing together eight professors across five disciplines. The team faced major coordination challenges: enabling cross‑faculty collaboration, presenting diverse materials in one easy‑to‑navigate, cohesive course shell, accommodating different teaching styles and delivery methods, and improving historically low online student evaluation completion rates.

Using Brightspace Online and Blended Learning, faculty collaborated in a single editable workspace, compiled discipline‑specific quiz items, and built a branded “Our Daily Brains” newspaper homepage that housed multimedia lessons and links. They embedded evaluation forms directly in the course, which doubled average evaluation response rates, heightened student engagement, won the 2014 Desire2EXCEL Collaboration Award, and created a replicable model that improved teaching practices across the college.

Harrisburg Area Community College

JuliaGrace Jester

Interim Department Chair of Social Sciences