The University of Hawaiʻi System is handing the keys to all of its online learning to Lamakū, its systemwide learning management platform, starting Summer 2026. That means every fully online and hybrid course across UH’s 10 campuses will run through Lamakū, speeding up the retirement of the older Laulima system.
In a system news release, university officials said the shift follows the adoption of a new executive policy and is meant to give students one consistent place to find course materials, communicate with instructors and check grades. Kim Siegenthaler, senior adviser to UH President Wendy Hensel, said having a single LMS should help students stay organized and give faculty a secure, well supported platform for teaching, according to UH News.
Policy That Formalizes The Shift
Executive Policy EP 5.301 lays out the university’s enterprise LMS requirements and expectations for third-party educational tools, accessibility and protection of student data. Per UH policy EP 5.301, the policy takes effect March 25, 2026, and requires that online and hybrid classes be delivered through an approved LMS that meets UH security and privacy standards.
What Lamakū Is
Lamakū is the university’s enterprise learning management system, powered by D2L Brightspace. The name translates to “torch” and was selected through a campuswide naming process. The university’s Lamakū guide describes the platform as supporting instruction across different teaching modes and notes that it includes systemwide training and support resources for both faculty and students, according to Discover Lamakū.
Timeline And Migration
UH is phasing out Laulima and offering migration support for instructors during the transition. The Laulima guidance lists July 31, 2026, as the deadline to request ITS-supported content transfers and indicates that archived access will be available afterward. Instructors who need help moving course materials are directed to campus instructional designers and UH ITS for assistance, per the university’s Laulima information page.
What This Means For Students And Faculty
Faculty can continue using third-party instructional tools when they make sense for a course, but those tools must be integrated through Lamakū and comply with UH standards for student-data protections and technical requirements, as outlined in EP 5.301. University officials say that standardizing on a single LMS should cut down on platform confusion for students while giving the system more consistent accessibility and security controls.
For full details and answers to common questions, the university points students, faculty and staff to the system news release and instructional-technology resources: UH News and the UH Information Technology Services instructional technologies guide. UH says individual campuses will keep providing local support while ITS coordinates migration resources across the system.
