Module 9: Folio vs. Brightspace

Module 9 – Folio vs. Brighstpace

Folio and Brightspace are very similar.  There were not many differences in the management systems.  Here are some that I found:

• Brightspace gives the students access to more resources such as the media center or the SAT Word of the Day directly through the Learning Management System.  On the contrary, these resources are not included in Folio because they are included on the Georgia Southern portal.  This difference makes sense being that GAVs only offers online courses whereas Georgia Southern offers online as well as face-to-face courses.  All students at Georgia Southern do not necessarily use Folio. It might be redundant to do so, but I would like for Galileo and other resources to be included within Folio so that as I work I could just click rather than going back to the portal to find these resources.
• Brightspace gives students assess to a glossary that has course specific vocabulary.  As an intern in this economics course, the glossary is helpful to me because it highlights terms that I may not know.  From the student perspective, this allows them to go back after completing a module to look at terms rather than going through the entire module again. 
• Brightspace has a locker in which students can store and manage files.  This seems convenient for things like my blog posts in this course that I save in Word before posting on my blog. I would like to use this feature as a student as I think it is a convenient organizational tool.
• Brightspace has a classroom bulletin board in addition to the news area.  Quick tidbits are posted here whereas news has more detailed information.  Most of my professors use the news section in Folio to give quick tidbits.  The bulletin board is on the homepage as soon as you enter the course on Brightspace.
• Folio has an “online rooms” tab that offers management for online chats. 
• Brightspace has a space in which groups can meet and manage group work.
• Brightspace (because we are looking from the teacher perspective) has an “edit course” option available.  My mentor and I previously discussed that the courses are already designed.  It is interesting to look at the “edit course” option to see how much autonomy he has with the course. I can see that he has the freedom to edit the homepage, add widgets, manage files and discussions, etc.  Therefore, although the course is not totally designed by the instructor, the instructor can still make it his own.
• Brightspace also offers a student toolbox that allows students to take 10-minute trainings on various software and web 2.0 tools.  This is my favorite feature of Brightspace.  I would definitely encourage students to use this is I were an online instructor and would make sure to include assignments that encourage them to use a variety of Web 2.0 tools.  Looking at the assignments in the economics course, not many Web 2.0 tools are used.  Student mostly turn in Word or PPT documents.  I think there is definitely always opportunities for students to utilize Web 2.0 tools in their assignments.  The student toolkit makes it easy for them to learn how.

It is evident that Brightspace and Folio were created by the same company (Desire2Learn) in that they have very similar elements.  The major differences are in the organization of such elements, and in the way the professor/teacher utilizes the elements.