AWS Self-Paced Labs vs. Blackboard Learn by Anthology vs. SplashLearn

Good for learning about the different AWS services in a non-real scenario. AWS Self-Paced Labs can be a bit overwhelming, and it is good to have the opportunity to see how the different services work.

Incentivized

A school with a well-established technology imprint with their students (for example, ours is a BYOB school where every student has their own laptop and must bring it to school every day and where over 99% of our families have reliable broadband at home) is a reasonable scenario for using The arrogance and intransigence of the sales force is quite disconcerting… They are no longer the only game in town and don't yet realize it. Less well-off schools/families may find it a challenge if students must be on campus or at a public library in order to use the technology. Obviously, during the pandemic, this became problematic for some districts.

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Following the pandemic students are made to sit in their computers all day absorbing learning, we as educators have little time to assess what they have learned, and students are often overloaded with information. The SplashLearn is like the moment in class when everyone zooms out of their auto-mode and gets active in class to compete. The students love playing, learning, and checking their skills along the way.

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• Easy to learn about the different services offered by AWS in a non-real environment
• Good to prepare for the AWS certification

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• Blackboard Learn makes submitting assignments electronically simple and provides a variety of built-in Web-based tools like e-portfolios, wikis, and blogs that our students use to create their own content.
• Blackboard Learn is intuitive and easy to navigate from a students perspective
• Blackboard Learn has many integrations available for connecting this LMS to other tools we use at our institution.

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• Learning is made very easy.
• Interactive user interface.
• Learning milestones are achieved.
• Makes learning fun by making it into a game.

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• AWS in general can be a bit overwhelming, as there are so many options that sometimes is difficult to understand when to use each one of the services

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• Blackboard Learn has some limitations when it comes to submissions
• It is not that user friendly, I had to spend some time to get a hang of it in the beginning
• I have been struggling a bit with deletion of manually added courses

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• A few additional learning materials could be provided along the games
• The gaming kept simpler, because sometimes it gets complicated.
• There sometimes are glitch in showing the grades for students.

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There are several aspects of Desire2Learn that outweigh the benefits of using Blackboard. I find that the Desire2Learn system is a bit more user friendly and looks more up-to-date. However, the decision to renew systems is not up to me because the entire University uses the same system. Regardless, I think I would choose Desire2Learn over Blackboard because of its improved user interface.

It is very usable for both faculty and students. The interface is pretty intuitive and most students can use it without a lot of additional training. Faculty do need some training to effectively use the interface, but they usually get it pretty quickly. We have had to create some additional programming to give faculty a way to delve deeper into the content.

My Blackboard support comes from the university I work with. They are responsive--eventually... but it takes them sometimes a week to respond to a reported issue. For example, I reported 2 issues last week and one was resolved and I was contacted about one still open option today. That is too long for a tech issue. I have not contacted any support offered directly by Blackboard, which may be a completely different experience altogether.

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Blackboard's Managed Hosting was top-notch in getting us up and running quickly.

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Coursera offers a variety of modules in which a team is able to work on then, but [Blackboard Learn] offers more options to understand how are the team members developing and which tasks have offered a harder challenger for them. [Blackboard Learn] also offers a variety of reports that can be generate by a team lead.

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The free usage of SplashLearn, coupled with the extensive coverage of math topics from kindergarten to grade 5 puts it ahead of competitors.

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• It will contribute to the incorporation of AWS technologies to our software products

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• At one of the institutions that I worked for, the ROI was excellent for the number of users we were serving; however, I could not speak to other instances as I was not aware of the overall cost of the contract.

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• It is very affordable.
• As a social oriented organization it is our first choice.
• Easier accessible for all students.

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