Case Study: University of Central Oklahoma achieves a complete, showcase-ready record of students' transformative learning with D2L Brightspace

Helping students track and showcase learning that happens outside the classroom

The University of Central Oklahoma, a public metropolitan university serving 17,000+ students, faced a major gap: transformative learning and development of “soft skills” happening outside the classroom weren’t captured or assessed, leaving students unable to clearly demonstrate growth against UCO’s “Central Six” tenets to employers or grad schools.

UCO built the Student Transformative Learning Record (STLR) on the Brightspace platform—using rubrics and a competency structure to tag assignments and co‑curricular activities to each tenet, integrated ePortfolios for artifacts and reflections, and a dashboard plus campus‑card/API tracking for attendance. Early results show strong adoption (177 faculty trained, 134 courses and 100 activities tagged in one semester, thousands of student enrollments) and measurable benefits, including a >10% increase in course completion rates along with gains in GPA and retention.

University of Central Oklahoma

Sonya Watkins

Associate Vice President of Information Technology