Blackboard Inc. is an enterprise learning management systems vendor. Blackboard was founded in 1997 and became a public company in 2004. The company provides education, mobile, communication, and commerce software and related services to clients including education providers, corporations and government organizations. As of December 2010, Blackboard software and services are used by over 9,300 institutions in more than 60 countries. Blackboard Learn is the company's flagship LMS, supporting…
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PowerSchool SIS
Score 7.0 out of 10
Mid-Size Companies (51-1,000 employees)
The PowerSchool Student
Information System covers administrative needs, such as scheduling, attendance,
reporting, data management, faculty management, emergency/medical and health
management, registration, and more for K-12 schools and districts. It is easy
to use and boasts an industry-leading gradebook, PowerTeacher Pro. Users enjoy
a fully web-based SIS that is flexible, configurable, and scalable with
real-time updates on any operating system, browser or device.
We use another product just like Blackboard Learn, and I also have used Google Classroom. I like Blackboard for this because the system and tabs are easy to map and navigate. I also think it appeals more to the students we have today who can connect better with technology than …
PowerSchool has many more features than Blackboard such as attendance, grades, performance review standards platform, lunch, etc. Blackboard makes it easy to find a parent’s email or phone number quickly which is not in PowerSchool.
Each of the above products has great features, but PowerSchool has features that each of the above products has, all in one system. This means that you could more easily use JUST PowerSchool without needing extensions and other systems to supplement features. This is less …
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.
PowerSchool Student Information System is a cool software that can be highly recommended to anyone who is living in the educational management space. It is proven that this software can reduce your manual workload massively if you use it right. Plus it is really worth the price you pay. Especially if you are in the administrative field, this software will help you to minimize manual efforts put into student registrations, staffing recruitment, and main resource management processes.
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.
PowerSchool houses student or staff information that can be easily accessed by those teachers and administrators who need the information. This allows everyone to go to one place to access information.
Parents can view their child's grades at any time with their protected login on a parent portal. This allows teachers to keep parents informed and involved in their child's progress at school. When everyone works together it increases our students' chance for success.
PowerSchool offers videos to train new users. When we have new employees, the videos can be accessed at any time the employee needs as opposed to them waiting for someone to help them.
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.
We would be starting over at square one if we did not continue our PowerSchool subscription. We do not have a program in a place that would take its place.
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.
Overall, I have not had to use support for PowerSchool Student Information System because our school district gives us training in each area in which we will be utilizing PowerSchool Student Information System. In terms of in-user support, I feel that there is mild to moderate user support that is built into PowerSchool SIS.
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.
I have heard good things for Infinite Campus and Skyward. I would [evaluate] each of them and see what fits your needs. Each has their strengths and weaknesses and so picking the right one for your needs is important. PowerSchool [Student Information System] does have some great features, but lacks some fundamental reports and functions to make it top notch.
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.
It has created shortcuts for all staff members, saving us time.
In creating shortcuts and combining many different systems into one, it is saving our school money.
It has created a safety net for teachers because grades and student information is stored electronically, which means teachers not having to worry about losing or misplacing their grade books.