D2L Brightspace vs. Google Classroom

Automate creation of online classrooms and appropriate content into each course, along with the enrollment of students, teachers, and principals via SIS and other integrations. Brightspace can be easily integrated to provide Single Sign On for ease of access by all users

Requires manual download and management of users into their courses by teachers unless using Google Workspace for Education Plus edition. (source) Supports SIS integrations through partner products Clever and Elevate Data Sync when using the Google Workspace for Education Plus edition

A role is a mechanism for storing a set of permissions. Assigning permissions to a role dictates what users in that role can see and do in the system. You can create any number of roles for your organization and enroll individual users in different roles for different org units.

• Student
• Teacher
• Manager
• Observer
• Department Observer
• Auditor
• Department Auditor
• Dummy Student
• Grader
• Builder
• Grader-Builder
• Department Grader-Builder
• Coordinator
• Department Admin
• Institution Admin
• Organization Admin
• Create Custom Roles

Standard teacher and student roles available, with no customizations. Teacher permissions allow educators to create and manage classes

Org units define the structure of an organization. By default, Brightspace Learning Environment contains org unit types for course offerings, course templates, departments, semesters, and the organization. You can define custom types to match your organization’s structure, such as consortium, college, community of practice, cohort, corporation, association etc.

No default org unit types – must be custom built by institution

Integrates with 3rd party tools that support the LTI (Learning Tool Interoperability) standard, which provides equitable access to all classroom technologies.

Does not offer integrations with many LTI tools teachers may want to use. Must select from a limited list of custom applications

Assignments, as a part of Google Workspace for Education Fundamentals, is available at no charge for educational institutions and supports LTI 1.1 or higher

Other integrations must be done through Google Classroom API

Accessibility best practices are built into our design and development processes. As part of quality assurance, our products are checked for compliance with the most up-to-date accessibility standards based on the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 Levels A, AA and AAA).

Built-in accessibility checker which can help you design course content while considering accessibility attributes

Integrates with third-party assistive technologies such as ReadSpeaker

Meets basic requirements. Does not support WCAG 2.1 Level AAA standards.

No built-in accessibility checker

Depending on your device, Google recommends the following screen readers and browsers:

• ChromeVox on ChromeOS devices
• NVDA or JAWS with Firefox or Chrome Browser on Windows devices
• VoiceOver with Chrome Browser on Mac devices

Ability to use Brightspace with embedded content from many vendors

Content authoring tools such as H5P are also integrated and can be utilized from within the Brightspace Learning Environment to keep educator workflows simple

Ability to use Google Classroom with embedded content from content vendors is limited

Import documents from your computer, Google Drive and the web

Use the HTML editor & pre-made templates to build great looking, accessible content within Brightspace

Our Creator+ package adds even greater functionality to empower educators to create inspired learning experiences

Import documents from your computer, Google Drive and the web.

Can’t create pages within the learning environment, requiring teachers to either use Google Apps documents or a third-party tool

Although still in beta, practice sets are a unique feature that help educators transform new & existing content into interactive assignments

Store individual items or whole units/lessons

Taggable and searchable by standards

Dynamic linking, meaning any updates are pushed to all courses where the item is embedded

Ability to share content to any courses across the organization

Not offered (one third party app does this for Google Classroom, additional cost)

Not offered

Not offered

Not offered

Icon based navigation for early readers

Ability to customize home pages for different ages of learners with look and feel, and tools used (K is different than 12)

Same interface and tools available for all ages of learners

No capabilities of icon navigation or to personalize the homepage

Teachers can copy their courses over each year, saving set up time by re-using announcements, content items and more

Bulk course copy available

Does not copy all features, or offset due dates, causing more work for teachers. Copied material is also a draft and must be manually published

Bulk course copy not available

Control when/how/why learners can move to the next content item via Release Conditions

Create groups of students to see content or collaborate on assessments, with invisible differentiation to their peers

No features to support differentiated learning

Cannot support creating groups of students for the purpose of differentiated learning

Schools can have their own branded and customized landing page that link to courses and other communication channels

No branding or even recognition of which organization the courses are offered through

Push out global announcements (i.e. from central level to all schools) which are presented on every school and course homepages

Users can subscribe and receive announcements via text and/or email, in addition to a visual indicator of new activity within the platform

Global announcements are not available

Users can subscribe and receive notifications for common course activities only

Create class-wide announcements or target to only a group of learners

Teacher can create video announcements

Can include links to documents & activities within Brightspace to Google Docs, external sites/resources and more

Class announcements are available, however, no ability to target a section or grouping of students (can send announcements to selected individual users one by one)

No embedded video note tool (confirmed through free Google Classroom account, can provide screenshots)

Can include links to documents & activities within Google Docs, external sites/resources and more

Automated messages to students based on activity in a course

No automated message support for students

Educators can manually email individual students, multiple students and all students or post announcements to an individual class

Integrations available for MS Teams, Zoom, Google Hangouts and more

Limited to Google Meet and Chat (Hangouts & Meet)

Parents have a dedicated mobile application that serves up information about specific components of their child’s course, including the Activity Feed, shared Portfolio artifacts, graded assessments and feedback as well as upcoming Assignments and Quizzes

Parents can subscribe to a weekly email report which includes:

• Activity Feed
• Shared Portfolio artifacts
• Graded Assessments and Feedback
• Upcoming Assignments and Quizzes

No opportunity for parents to access student work and see progress

Parents can subscribe to a weekly email report which includes:

• Missing work
• Upcoming work
• Class activity

Variety of assignment types including in-person, file submission, text-only and video

Align assessments and learning objects to standards/learning outcomes/learning objectives

Rich feedback options including teacher provided video and audio feedback

File submission and text are the only submission types

Cannot align assessments or learning objects to standards or learning objects to standards/learning outcomes/learning objectives

No support for video or audio feedback. (recommend chrome extension Mote or Google Keep, as workaround for audio feedback)

Students can create video, audio, web content and text posts

Flexible options for controlling discussions such as anonymous, must post before reviewing other learner responses and much more

Students can only post web content or text posts in discussions

No anonymous discussion feature built-in (requires 3^rd party tool)

Rich summative/formative assessment features for quizzes including date availability, length of time to complete, number of attempts and which submission counts for assessment (first, best, or last)

Automated grading of all question types (except written response)

Built-in secure quizzing tool

Features include question pools, regrading, timer, granting students extra time to complete quizzes and more

Create summative/formative assessments including

traditional question types like multiple choice, short answer and more.

Automated grading available of some question types

Quizzing requires you to use Google Forms. This brings up security concerns as users can easily share and preview the form

Missing basic features such as quiz timer, date restrictions, question pools and regrading

Assessment tools automatically transfer to the grade book

Gradable items only include Google Apps, file, text and images.

Dedicated mobile app designed for students as young as kindergarten to collect artifacts of learning and reflect

Not available

Offered through partners

5 free reports offered per classroom

Teacher dashboard shows trends across students by reviewing several metrics at any one time, such as content, discussions, assignments, or grades.

Detailed metrics of each assessment for teacher to review trends and success of student learning

Teacher dashboards are limited to counts of work submitted and graded

Google Classroom itself has no built-in analytics, so it can prove to be quite difficult to track individual students’ contributions, or even specific discussions around readings or activities.

Teachers and students can see the same view of student’s progress including overall course progress, time on task for content items, discussion participation, assignment submissions and standards achievement

Can only track progress on individual Google App files.

Reports available for schools, principals and districts include login trends, course participation and learner achievement across all courses within a school

Limited reports available to administrators via Google Admin Console

Reports include number of active users, classes created, posts created and last active time in Classroom

Teachers have predictive analytics and a visual report to spot potential problems sooner, allowing for quicker intervention

Not available

All user data and course materials are owned by the client, not D2L

Upon graduation, K-12 student users may be prompted to transfer the contents of their school Drive account to a personal Drive account. This may mean they are no longer treated with special protections