Case Study: Xavier University of Louisiana achieves 99% faculty adoption and a rapid shift to online teaching with D2L Brightspace

Streamlining the transition to online teaching

Xavier University of Louisiana (XULA), a leading historically Black university, needed to shift quickly to online instruction when COVID-19 closed campuses. With a goal of maintaining academic excellence and a better mobile experience than their legacy LMS, XULA faced the challenge that many faculty had only used Brightspace for limited tasks and lacked experience building full online courses.

XULA built a quick-start Brightspace course, "Learn Everywhere XULA" (LEX), supported by a blog and podcast and consistent training modules to upskill faculty rapidly. The initiative trained 217 full-time instructors (96% certified), drove university-wide adoption to about 99% of faculty, reduced support requests, enabled instructors to build courses independently, and improved student engagement—while laying the groundwork for advanced features like intelligent agents and achievement badges.

Xavier University of Louisiana

Elizabeth Yost Hammer

Director, Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Faculty Development