Edsby vs. Brightspace: Two Systems, One Missing Assignment

"Edsby vs. Brightspace" sounds like a choice between two products. For a lot of Canadian teachers it isn't a choice at all. Their board runs both — and the interesting question isn't which is better, it's what falls into the gap between them.

Why so many boards have both

In Ontario, the Ministry of Education provides a learning management system — the Virtual Learning Environment — to every publicly funded school board at no cost, and D2L confirms that platform is Brightspace. So every Ontario board has Brightspace available, whether or not it uses it heavily.

Edsby is something a board chooses and pays for. It's a Canadian K-12 platform, based in the Toronto area, that combines class pages, a gradebook, attendance, report cards, and a parent portal and app. It is not a student information system — it connects to the board's SIS (PowerSchool, Edsembli, Maplewood, Aspen, and others) and sits on top of it. Ontario boards that list it include York Region, Greater Essex County, Kawartha Pine Ridge, and Durham Catholic, among others; outside Ontario, Edsby said in 2024 that more than 80% of Saskatchewan students were on it, through division-by-division adoption rather than a provincial deal.

The result, in boards like Greater Essex and York Region, is a split: families are pointed to Edsby for attendance, schedules, and classroom updates, while Brightspace hosts courses — particularly online and blended ones. Greater Essex publishes a single help page covering "Edsby, Brightspace, and Teams," which tells you how normal the arrangement has become. (It also notes that Edsby is optional for teachers, so even within one board the picture varies.)

What each tells parents about missing work

Edsby has an Overdue flag. A teacher sets it on an assessment in the gradebook, and Edsby's help centre says it's visible on both the student's and the parent's Edsby homepage. It's applied automatically only when the assessment uses Edsby's own electronic submission, the due date has passed, and no grade has been entered; otherwise it's a manual flag. Parents also see "My Work" — upcoming, graded, and incomplete assessments — and can turn on email and push notifications for class activity and assignments due soon. Edsby's notification documentation doesn't list an overdue alert for parents, so the flag is something parents see when they log in rather than something sent to them.

Brightspace tells parents about missing work through Parent & Guardian: a Work To Do list with an Overdue section, released grades, and a weekly summary email. That works only if the board has enabled Parent & Guardian and linked parent accounts to students — and in a board that uses Edsby as its parent portal, there's a good chance it hasn't, because families already have somewhere to go. We cover Brightspace's routes in detail in who gets told when work goes missing in Brightspace.

Side by side

The gap: they don't talk to each other

Here's the part that matters for the teacher in the middle. We could find no documented integration between Edsby and Brightspace — Edsby's integrations page lists student information systems, not learning management systems, and neither side describes grade or submission sync with the other.

So picture a Grade 7 teacher in a board that runs both. The assignment lives in Brightspace; that's where students submit. The parents live in Edsby; that's where the board told them to look. When three students don't submit, Brightspace knows — but Edsby doesn't. Edsby's Overdue flag only sets itself for Edsby's own e-submissions, so for Brightspace work, the parent's Edsby view stays clean unless the teacher opens Brightspace, writes down the three names, switches to Edsby, and flags each assessment by hand. Or messages each parent by hand.

None of that is a flaw in either product. Each is doing what it was designed to do. The gap exists because a board chose two systems for two jobs, and missing work happens to straddle both.

What to do about it

If your coursework lives in Edsby, you're in good shape: use e-submission, and the Overdue flag takes care of itself on the parent's homepage. Make sure families have the Edsby app, and point them to the notification settings.

If your coursework lives in Brightspace and your parents live in Edsby, decide on one routine and stick to it — a weekly pass where you check Brightspace submissions and either flag the matching Edsby assessments or message the families. It's manual, but it's predictable, and parents will learn when to look.

If you only use Brightspace, ask whether your board has turned on Parent & Guardian. If it has, a lot of this is automatic already.

Where ClassWatcher fits

ClassWatcher is a Chrome extension that works only on the Brightspace side. It scans a Brightspace assignment or quiz page and lists who hasn't submitted, with their marks, which shortens the "open Brightspace, write down the names" step above. It can also text or email a parent directly, using contact details you enter yourself. It doesn't read or write anything in Edsby, so it won't set Edsby's Overdue flag for you, and if your board expects parent communication to go through Edsby's mailbox, you'd use ClassWatcher's free missing-work list and send the message in Edsby. If your coursework is in Edsby rather than Brightspace, ClassWatcher does nothing for you. It doesn't cover discussions, its texting is one-way, and it runs in desktop Chrome only.

Related: our parent-communication landscape puts Edsby next to Remind, ParentSquare, and ClassDojo, and Google Classroom vs. Brightspace compares what parents are told on each.