De La Salle–College of Saint Benilde

Challenge

Managing evolving learner needs

The De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde (Benilde) is a private Catholic educational institution, founded in Manila in the 1980s as a night school for working professionals. Since then, Benilde has grown to offer secondary and tertiary education to approximately 12,000 students across four campuses and eight schools. The college is known as a trailblazer for innovative education and was the first in the Philippines to offer a wide range of non-traditional degree courses such as applied deaf studies, animation, hospitality management, and diplomacy and international affairs.

Aiming to meet the needs of under-served and diversely gifted learners, Benilde was an early adopter of learning management system (LMS) software. However, in recent years, the ever-evolving needs of its learners had begun to push the limits of the open-source LMS that the college’s edtech team had selected back in 2005. To embrace new ways of teaching, Benilde sought a new learning platform that could support its learner-centered approach.

Solution

An innovative platform for an innovative college

Benilde’s edtech team selected D2L Brightspace as its new LMS after recognizing how the innovative tools within the platform could support the college’s mission.

Benilde launched Brightspace—introduced within the institution as “BigSky”—and established a robust faculty support scheme to help drive adoption. Regular LMS workshops and training sessions familiarize faculty users with best practices and new features, and a dedicated LMS support team is always available to resolve technical questions

Developing a data-driven approach

To support continuous pedagogical innovation within the college, Benilde also established a Minimum Standards for BigSky Usage (MSBU) framework for the faculty to follow. Leveraging the data hub feature in D2L Brightspace, administrators analyze data including instructor usage, learner usage and activity feed post logs. The data is cleaned and aggregated, enabling administrators to count, for example, how many courses are using the rubrics or the announcements features. Each program is then ranked by its level of compliance with the MSBU framework, which allows Benilde to highlight programs with high
compliance and address those that need improvement.

“We believe that data-driven insights are instrumental in fostering a dynamic learning environment,” says Rogelio del Cano, director of center of education technology. “Working closely with D2L and leveraging Brightspace’s data capabilities, we can continuously improve our use of technology to empower both teaching and learning.”

These insights also enable Benilde to reward faculty members who are top users of the LMS with certificates and special tokens, incentivizing faculty to make more effective use of the tools available within the platform.

Result

Supporting a consistent learning experience

With Brightspace, Benilde is now in a position to continue developing pioneering educational programs and fostering accessibility.

Through the robust MSBU framework and the LMS support team, Benilde brought about a 176% increase in faculty user count. The high number of users in turn creates more data for the college to analyze, supporting the continuous improvement of the user experience. As a result, the college is seeing a 71% compliance rate with the MSBU framework, ensuring a consistent and engaging learning experience, and encouraging transparency, accessibility and effective communication between faculty and learners.

Creating Benilde for all

Already at the forefront of inclusive learning with its School of Deaf Education and Applied Studies and a learner-centered approach to education, Benilde is leveraging Brightspace to further boost accessibility.

For example, Brightspace’s release conditions feature creates a modular format and a clear learning path for the programs, helping learners who struggle with organizing their time, as well as those who thrive in organized environments. In parallel, the team at the center for inclusive education uses the class progress feature to monitor learners’ usage of the courses, enabling them to be more proactive in identifying learners who are struggling and providing additional support.

By creating online discussion forums with the discussions tool, Benilde can provide a less intimidating environment for learners with communication challenges and social anxiety to participate in class discussions. Faculty have observed that a blended learning approach with online discussions has facilitated learner participation and interaction without disrupting in-person classes. Similarly, augmenting traditional text-based course materials with audio and video recordings and subtitles is beneficial for students with diverse learning styles and abilities.

“Brightspace is crucial to our ‘Benilde for all’ vision,” concludes Martin Czyrus Romero, director of center for inclusive education. “It creates an accessible and inclusive learning experience for all students.”