Atlassian Loom vs. D2L Brightspace

Loom is a must, I am not sure how many other tools like this one there are but Loom really becomes a key player in a team collaboration, specially if that team collaborates remotely or internationally. You can use the video links to embedded these in other places or downloadthem for editing

If you're an educational institution (K-12, Higher Ed, etc.), this is an amazing tool, and it will provide you all the functionality to support anything you may want and need it to do. If you are looking at Brightspace as a tool for corporate training, I'm not sure exactly how good or bad it will be for you. My guess would be that it likely depends on your organization's size. Along that line, what I can speak to is how we use it for our customized training and in-house professional development/training, and it works fantastically for that. While we primarily use it for normal higher ed coursework, we regularly do training and professional development for all of our employees and I manage those along with our HR department. Because we use it for many other things as well, all of our employees are familiar with the product, which makes our trainings go that much smoother and makes my job that much easier.

Incentivized

• Loom is valuable for creating video tutorials and onboarding materials.
• It allows trainers to record step-by-step instructions, share best practices, and provide visual demonstrations, facilitating the learning process for new employees or team members.
• Sales teams can create personalized video pitches or product demonstrations to engage prospects effectively.
• Collaborating between timezones and replacing meetings/ emails with quick videos.

Incentivized

• Allowing users to embed content links from YouTube or Google Drive enables learners to experience a richer lesson.
• Providing a powerful editor that allows developers to also include content from Adobe Stock as well as textbook publishers and cloud storage companies gives more power and creative ability to instructors.
• Providing scaling for mobile and traditional computer systems ensures students will not have issues on the go.
• The customization of home pages and groups enable courses to be used for small training sessions with breakout groups, large courses with separate sections, and even just more engaging courses that present themed icons and logos.

• The still screenshot feature should let us edit/mark up the images.
• I work on 3 X monitors and the desktop version of Loom still can't seem to know that I always want to record on the screen from which I open the app. Short of that, it should ask us what screen we want to record on instead of making us catch the fact that it's set to record on some other screen. This causes me to have to stop the recording and restart because it was recording the wrong screen.
• You can't yet transfer a video seamlessly between workspaces. This causes you to have to download and then re-upload to the other workspace if you happen to work for numerous companies using Loom.

Incentivized

• One can feel a bit rushed on the Brightspace platform during the log-out period. Security requirements may require this, but it makes end-users more conscious about getting through content than taking notes.
• From my experience, there is not a direct connection between the platform and Outlook.
• Some content on the platform can feel redundant.

Incentivized

I would never give any system a perfect score. In the technology environment today we need to be constantly looking at ways to improve the user experience and LMS companies like Desire2Learn need to know that we have options today with other systems and they need to stay current with features and listen to their customers.

It's dirt easy for the one thing it does exceptionally well. If you think, "hmmm, I should make a quick screen capture of this thing on screen, you can start recording in seconds with almost no additional effort." Once you're done, the recording is automatically uploaded to your account site, and automatically creates a URL you can copy and share with your target audience. From IDEA to EXECUTION to DISTRIBUTION is literally seconds.

Incentivized

Overall, the learning environment works as expected. However, there are plenty of bugs. For example, for a few versions, trying to print out a PDF from the Content screen in several browsers would produce a blank page. We inform D2L support about these issues, most of which are known issues. However, they are very slow to respond. D2L seems to spend more time selling than actually coding and testing their product. Most of the issues are not major -- however, there have been a few that are unbelievable. In fact, this past week we had a sudden issue where the "Submit" button in quizzes would not appear if users had a certain browser/operating system combination. This is a major problem, if students cannot submit their exams! D2L is slow to respond to these kinds of situations, which do occur more often than I would like.

Both students and instructor enjoy the 24-hoiur access. After, all isn't that the point of online learning. As an instructor located in an Eastern time zone state it is great to connect with students located in a Pacific time zone state. I have gotten comments about the early hours I am in the course room grading assignments . . . 4:00 a.m. PST; 7:00 a.m. EST So, it's sleep time for my students and "first cup of coffee" time for me.

Loom is one of my favorite solutions and I've been a raving fan since they first launched. The value of quickly sharing videos in seconds is amazing. Our customers love it so much that they have even downloaded the Loom Chrome extension for their own use with their clients! It's so simple, and nothing else compares or competes.

Incentivized

Easy to navigate; little to no delay from one section of the course room to another; actually fun to use after overcoming the learning curve.

I use Loom for simple tasks. Never used customer support really. It's so simple to use. I haven't had any real issue with Loom which would require customer support to help me out. So I just put 5 because I don't know if the customer support is good or bad since I never used, so I'm kind of neutral.

Incentivized

I have had excellent support from Desire2Learn. Any ticket that I submit is acknowledged immediately and the correction is usually almost as quick. We use this for thousands of classes and it is pretty well liked by both faculty and students. We have been using it for almost 4 years now and most of our instructors have become pretty proficient with it.

Did not participate in the in-person training due to distance; training was completed online

The training provided online did not, necessarily, fit the version of the system that I was using. Screens were somewhat different and not all options were readily available. This could have been due to customization on the part of my institution however, I rather believe it was due to version changes and training materials not yet being updated.

The D2L implementation team listened to our concerns and built a system based upon our needs. We wanted to keep them after the initial implementation.

When we evaluated the alternatives, Loom was by far the most advanced tool, with multiple types of integrations. Additionally, Loom also provided a Free plan, which made it easy to consider as an alternative. Vidyard and similar tools integrated better with certain other tools (Vidyard + HubSpot), but Loom had better overall integrations with most tools we use.

Incentivized

I have used Blackboard Learn 8 and 9. I am currently learning about Canvas. Blackboard is overall much clunkier and lacks the intuitive feel in some parts of D2L. Its grade book is much harder to control and manipulate than D2L's. Its navigation menu can be more radically modified from the default than D2L's, but this doesn't seem that useful to me. Discussions in Blackboard can be more easily reorganized than in D2L, but no grading of discussions is possible. Blackboard Assignments is a good innovation which allows markup directly in the students' submissions, but it displays student work in a confusing manner that doesn't allow for any customization, and its markup options need further tweaking. Furthermore, no rubrics can be used in Blackboard in any way to grade any kind of work (that I am aware of). Overall, I would choose D2L over Blackboard.

During my first semester working with Desire2Learn the integrated learning management system was more down than up. This meant reconfiguring assignment due dates, frustration for both the instructor, students, and help desk staff. After an upgrade, Desire2Learn has been reliable.

• Loom has increased my efficiency and value to clients so much. I save a ton of time by being able to send them video recordings walking through their website rough drafts and final tutorials.
• Loom is incredibly affordable. I am satisfied with their subscription cost.
• Loom has helped me communicate clearly to clients, so there's less room for error/misunderstanding (especially when talking about design decisions).

Incentivized

• I cannot speak to whether this system is less expensive than the more fully featured Blackboard, but employees are far less efficient, frustrated, and require frequent calls to the help center to set up fairly simple course templates.
• I have been asked to consider teaching courses which will be completely online at my current institution. I have done such online courses several times at other universities, but I have decided Desire2Learn is too frustrating and cumbersome to do so. I am now exploring using Google Drive to teach a course online. Otherwise, I will not teach online until required or I find an alternate system.