Likelihood to Recommend 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.
Read full review Brainshark is very user-friendly and it’s very easy to create learning content, even a beginner could walk through it fairly easily. They also have a great support team and help site that can pretty much answer any question with video tutorials.
Read full review Pros 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. Read full review I love how easy creating a Brainshark and their formal learning is to use. Upload an animated Power Point, record audio, add music, or use videos etc. Their formal learning also keeps track of people in classes, allows us to invite people to a curricula, send notifications when classes are added, and update on the fly without having to resubmit all new classes. I also love that people in classes can run their own transcript and see where they are in a program, and if graded how they scored. Betsy Abney Wealth Management Academy Assistant Advocate
Read full review Cons 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 Meena B Information Technology Project Manager
Read full review Brainshark has addressed a number of feature enhancements over the past two years...it really performs at a high level on a consistent basis... Ocassionally we run into a large video file >500mb that we have to address directly with support but it does not happen very often... Mike Buege Managing Partner - Director of Business Development
Read full review Likelihood to Renew 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.
Read full review Our customers (internal employees) have expressed desired for online learning and we have received positive feedback on the Brainshark modules used in eLearning and communications. We are also increasing usage at the project level as the word spreads about the benefits of using Brainshark.
Read full review Usability 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.
Read full review The vendor offers customer support services that are reliable and diverse and this ensures that users do not get stuck anywhere in using the platform and are able to use with minimal hitches.
Read full review Reliability and Availability I'm always able to access Brainshark, whether it is to upload, record, share, download, or view presentations. Whenever I do need to contact someone at Brainshark, there is always someone there. I have never had a problem accessing a presentation and any updates to presentations are viewable immediately.
Read full review Support Rating 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.
Read full review We've found a few glitches and needed some branding updated. Each time we've called, they were super responsive and cared about my issue as much as I did! They've even helped me (and another vendor) figure out how to have this other outside software integrate with theirs to achieve an even greater presentation. I'm super impressed with their Customer Service people.
Read full review Online Training The training is easy to use. You can take as little or as much as you need. The instructions are clear and easy to follow. There is a variety of training you can take. There are mini lessons, courses, and webinars. The folks at Brainshark truly want to help you have the best presentation possible.
Read full review Implementation Rating Blackboard's Managed Hosting was top-notch in getting us up and running quickly.
Read full review Their ongoing support after implementation is excellent and easy to access...
Mike Buege Managing Partner - Director of Business Development
Read full review Alternatives Considered 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.
Read full review There are a lot of sites that allow you to host/share content in the loud. What won for me was their tracking, analytics, and reporting. At the time there was nobody even close to Brainshark and I have not seen anything since that would make me want to switch. I look forward to many years working with them.
Read full review Return on Investment 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. Read full review Client satisfaction - we send out summaries of our big webcasts/conference calls via Brainshark. We've received lots of replies stating they love the format because they can consume the information on their own time. Time to market - before Brainshark, it took several days, if not weeks to work with a design team to get professional-looking summaries available. Now, we have the process down to a day or two. Read full review ScreenShots Blackboard Learn by Anthology Screenshots