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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Tovuti LMS
Score 9.5 out of 10
Mid-Size Companies (51-1,000 employees)
Tovuti's cloud-based learning management system (LMS) gives users tools to create, deliver, and track the effectiveness of eLearning programs. It helps users to create engaging interactive courses in minutes with Tovuti's interactive modules and a course creation suite. Users can build as many courses and lessons as they need. Learners get a personal dashboard with everything relevant to their learning experiences such as courses, checklists, badges, and certificates.
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.
The amount of support available alone makes this system as great as it is! This is the 4th LMS I've worked with and the 3rd I've personally had a hand in setting up. Tovuti LMS is by far the most user-friendly on both the admin and end-user sides that I've experienced. This system works great for our users many of whom are 65+ in age, so the user-friendly part is essential. I know I've already said it, but the amount of support provided by the Tovuti Team is top-notch. If someone that I'm dealing with doesn't have an immediate answer to my query someone else always gets back to me in a timely manner. I no longer have to spend additional time searching for answers.
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.
Customization - we support internal and external users, the ability to have unique registrations fields for the different audiences is a game changer, the ability to build custom reports is helpful as well.
Interactive Content Tools - Love the ability to create interaction with users so it is not just text or videos they are looking at.
Ease of Use on End User Side - It's not tricky, all levels of tech savvy users can find success as learners!
iFraming has always been an interesting feature to try out, but the design can be tricky. Allowing for my useable iFraming activities is always on my list.
Offering reporting/results on interactive videos is something I've been missing from the start. We use interactive videos to provide checkpoints of understanding, but there's no result section on the back end to review students' responses - only a numerical score is provided.
Toggling between personal dashboards and team lead dashboards is a great capability, but this opens a new tab. I'd rather everything stay within one tab and navigate through that!
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 have established the training department to extend our training capabilities into one central area. I have mentioned training production, internal and external sales staff. But the training department will surely delve into the HR area of new hire orientation, annual recertification processes, etc. We truly have just scratched the surface of this iceberg. Now that we have made the investment, we will surely continue with this product. I cannot see us moving to another product at all. We will definitely renew our subscription with Tovuti
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.
As far as building the program, once you have learned the basics it is very easy to upload and create content. They also provide a ton of resources and have an extremely responsive help team, so when and If I am stuck, Tovuti is quick to help me find the solution. The test users I have given access to have all mentioned the ease of navigation and use of the program overall.
I have worked with so many software packages that are slow to load, take for ever for screen changes, etc. I do not have that issue here with Tovuti at all. I have yet to really do any reporting on it as we are fairly new with the package, but if it operates like the rest of the system, then I am going to assume that reporting will be no more difficult than the rest of the platform
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.
The pre-sales team was very helpful and responsive and then stopped responding to my mail as soon as I had signed the contract, not even a reply from the last couple of emails sent. The post-sale teams are engaged and quick to respond and really good. Unfortunately, I need to use them more than I should, and sometimes the reply is "we don't support that feature", but the support from the support team is excellent.
Hayden was awesome. He knows his product inside and out and was able to answer all my questions. I had a lot of questions. I was actually starting to build courses while I was going through the training so that when the next session on the schedule came up, I had even more questions about what I had done vs the way I maybe should have. In the end, I was doing my own hands-on while going through the training. Tovuti is that easy to use.
The implementation had extremely wonderful support from Tovuti in the form of a series of one-on-one meetings to hear the clients needs and intended usage and then to set up the platform to meet those needs while demonstrating how to use it.
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.
Tovuti LMS is super easy to use compared to Relias. Relias is very clunky and we always would have learners have issues with the platform. Tovuti's buildout process compared to Relias is very clean and easy to use. The analytics and reporting are also amazing, plus the cost is so much more affordable for what you're getting. The only caveat to this is that Relias has content included and the content is well done.
Scalability is great. We bought their first 'size' package and that covers 300 trainees. Transitioning to the next level is more a matter of accounting and payment. My take on it is that its just a matter of paying the higher level of subscription and its done
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.
