Blackboard Learn by Anthology vs. SkyPrep LMS

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.

Incentivized

SkyPrep LMS is well-suited to organizations that do not currently utilize an LMS. The support provided from step one through implementation is excellent. SkyPrep LMS not only wants to help make an organization run more efficiently when it comes to upskilling employees and/or clients, they also want to learn from the needs of organizations in order to better serve all of their clients.

• 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.

Incentivized

• Building a class is super easy from pre-recorded powerpoints, videos
• Assessment Building and Quizzes are user friendly
• The reporting features for both internal and external use by clients is robust, but also controllable
• Very extensive administrative features can be administered dependent on client/company needs

Incentivized

• 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

Incentivized

• Many of the features in the newly released "Studio" are difficult to understand
• It would be great if I had more control of what data my dashboard contained
• Need to streamline their email delivery system and offer fewer but richer features.

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.

I say 9 instead of 10 not because of any lack of confidence in SkyPrep but only because I can't be sure how large or responsive my market -- male-friendly social workers and other helping professionals -- will be to my offerings.

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.

The user interface is simple, clean, and intuitive to use for both learners and educators. Learning modules can be arranged in any fashion creators/educators desire and have assessments embedded within. Ordering of modules can be enforced, and content can be made optional or required easily. Everything is from top to bottom is customizable.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

SkyPrep LMS was the most cost-effective solution that had all our desired features and functionality. Each platform has a lot of similarities and for us, ensuring ease of navigation and cost were top priorities. SkyPrep LMS appeared to be the most user-friendly -- the others had great features and functions, but SkyPrep LMS appeared as the cleanest.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• Previously we had a limited # of clients who paid for access to our LMS. SkyPrep LMS allows us to proudly charge for access to our LMS now. We expect to achieve our ROI in the next 12 - 34 months.