Case Study: University of Arizona achieves on-demand course creation and instant grade submission with D2L Brightspace

Empowering Instructors to Teach the Way They Want to Teach

The University of Arizona, a nationally ranked institution serving ~43,000 students with ~4,000 faculty and a rapidly expanding online catalog, faced a growing operational bottleneck: building and maintaining thousands of course sites each year. A legacy “holding tank” workflow required instructors to submit change requests to staff for even simple actions (merges, section splits), forcing support teams to spend large portions of each semester on manual course configuration instead of instructional support.

Using the Brightspace Developer Platform, UA implemented a real-time integration with PeopleSoft, a mobile-responsive drag-and-drop site for faculty, cascading roles and LTI integrations, and a one-click grade import—powered by AWS and supported by D2L technical account management. The result: faculty now manage course changes themselves, the university doubled the number of course sites supported without increasing a five-person team, saved substantial staff hours, and earned D2L’s Excellence in Integrations and Extensibility Award.

University of Arizona

Mark Felix

Director of Institutional Support