It is official: Brightspace will be UG’s new learning management system. The court finally rejected all the points presented in the formal objection by the contender promoting Blackboard Ultra.
After the trial, which took place on September 3, last Friday the court released the verdict on the formal objection filed by Blackboard after the conclusion of the European tender launched by UG for a new system to replace Nestor – the UG version of Blackboard, which had been in place since 2000.
‘All the complaints filed were rejected, and that’s very good news. We can finally confirm that Brightspace will be the new system’, says project manager Michiel van Geloven.
The two major complaints by Blackboard were related to the article Bye Bye Blackboard?, published by UKrant in February this year, and to the way UG assessed the functionality of the systems participating in the tender.
Rejected
‘According to the accusing contender, the article could have been biasing in the choice for a new system’, Van Geloven explains. This accusation was rejected by the court.
‘The assessment of the functionalities was also considered fair and even’, he adds.
Brightspace scored the highest in both functionality and usability during the assessment; this result might have been one of the causes for the objection.
As the scheduled implementation of the new system hasn’t suffered a great delay, the UG will follow the prefixed timetable. Over the next few months, the university will work to build the necessary structure for the new system, and the first pioneer courses will appear on Brightspace in February. In April, things will scale up, until September 2022, when Brightspace will replace Nestor completely.