BlueJeans Events (discontinued) vs. Google Classroom

BlueJeans Events is really well-suited for large attendance virtual events and meetings. It was perfect for many of the classes I've taken, as well as hosted, especially during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, where oftentimes in-person classes and interactions have been limited. I love how BlueJeans Events fosters meetings and interactions for large numbers of individuals, despite the fact that in-person meetings of this size have not entirely been feasible during the past year and a half.

Incentivized

- During the pandemic, the college needs a fast and easy solution to conduct Google Classroom. The integration with Google Accounts and Google Meet allows the university to run and access the Classroom on a large scale. - The teacher wants to conduct some exams in third-party software like Moodle. But we have not found any plugin for this famous open-source learning platform. The exam system in Google Classroom is so poor that it doesn't even fully screen the test when students are writing their exams.

• Automatically generated reminder emails to registered attendees before the event.
• Easy to host a panel and have them meet before the event goes live.
• Moderator chat allows for those running the program to chat without all of the attendees seeing. This allows for you to address technical issues, program flow, etc.

Incentivized

• Student-teacher communication - I love using Classroom for this because my students can always go back and check what was on Classroom by looking through the stream. This way they don't have to go dig through emails to find what they're looking for.
• Posting to multiple classes - I can post the same announcement or assignment to multiple classes at once without having to repeat the process or send separate emails.
• Streamlining grading - when students turn work in on Classroom, it all goes to one place and then when I'm grading I can open their documents directly from Classroom or my Drive folder. This way, I'm not looking through emails and Google Doc shared files for their assignment.

Incentivized

• Reliability is the biggest challenge I see with BlueJeans. There are times when BlueJeans seems to handle the demands of a big company seamlessly, but then there are other times when BlueJeans runs into issues that I've seen affect entire offices for extended periods of time which creates a challenge for the teams who depend on BlueJeans to effectively run their remote meetings. While in the grand scheme of things, these outages have been few and far between, when they happen people aren't able to start their BlueJeans meetings and have to scramble for an alternate way to meet (while attendees are simultaneously having issues trying to dial into the BlueJeans meeting).
• Aside from the occasional outage, the quality of the video and audio is pretty solid. With variables that are likely outside of the BlueJeans product (office connectivity, bandwidth issues, internal routing) there are times where BlueJeans would either lag or echo which would either impact the output for the host of the meeting (who likely has a room full of participants) or multiple attendees. It would be great to see BlueJeans enhance their packet handling in these cases to prioritize audio over video (and perhaps auto-adjust video quality when there are bandwidth issues).

• Although usually in the discussion with other LMS apps such as Schoology and Canvas, Google Classroom doesn't possess as in-depth of a platform. There is no ability to set individual learning paths, pace student work with completion settings, or embed other apps directly into teacher-created assignments.
• The assignment creation options are limited. Teachers can only choose from creating an assignment (usually a link with directions), a material (usually a doc/slide/website, etc), a question, and a quiz.
• With gamification taking on a new lens in education, there really isn't any way to use gamification elements with Google Classroom. There isn't any way to create Individual learning paths, or use badges and micro-credentials within Classroom. Outside programs would have to be used.

Incentivized

We use it frequently and it has its advantages so I don't see better options for some kind of meetings. The quality of video and audio are great and that's what is very important to us. We like thing being professional. BlueJeans is simple and rich in possibilities. What's more, BlueJeans support is great and professional, they don't forget about their customers.

Incentivized

Testing is particularly important in online learning, and Google Classroom falls far short of other learning management systems in this regard. Security is also a concern: while account control is reasonable for the account used with Google Classroom, the person controlling a particular account is often able to, for example, forward or download proprietary materials.

This rating comes from end user experience. When they step into a meeting, they get asked to put in SSO credentials if the meeting is restricted. In many cases, the meeting is open to anyone and staff needs to enter a name to continue. Some staff will forget to add a name and come in as a Guest. Call in options will only provide the phone number for the person calling in on the participant roster. This overall can be a little confusing for some, but to others this is a great service.

Incentivized

This is only a product I would recommend to a humanities teacher. Math and science teachers cannot use this product the same way that I can as an English teacher. It is great for word process and for reading, but unable to handle the demands of math and science. Therefore, I would highly recommend this product to English or Social Studies teachers, but NOT math or science teachers

Incentivized

BJ Events is Available always when we need it. There was no situation that we encountered an error or an outage. How are you doing this? :)

Incentivized

We have had very little trouble in accessing Google Classroom. Our issues, if any, have risen from our server and not the Google servers.

Incentivized

I think that BlueJeans Events is 7/10 because it's pretty efficient. The audio and video quality is pretty great. I've only had a few connectivity issues but otherwise, it's performed fine. The features are also impressive; I am a huge fan of being able to record my calls so that I can refer back to them whenever necessary.

Incentivized

I really like site bluejeans.com and how simple it is.You can find there instructions, tips and how to create event or secure it! Of course FAQ is always useful and that's what you can find there too! Of course there is contact to support team which I remember was great and professional. Support Team really cares about their customers and don't forget about them. It feels like you can always count on them and reach out with any kind of question(s) which I think is very important.

Incentivized

Since this platform is provided by Google, the technical support is better than any others, and we are not required to bother about the space constraints for adding the contents. If we have a good uninterrupted internet facility we can access Google Classroom without any delay or lag. They have app support in both Android and iPhone.

Important to gather all infroamtion from client and ensure all basis are acknowledged before actually doing the installation of equipment

Incentivized

It was relatively easy to implement due to the simplicity of the platform. Even our more technology challenged teachers found it easy to get started with Google Classroom.

Incentivized

BlueJeans Events is an all-in-one platform that works well when used as a moderator and as part of the audience. The feature that was useful was the practice session it allowed us to do for our tech check. Made the day of our event less stressful.

Incentivized

I haven't tested or evaluated another digital classroom website or application. I feel like Google Classroom is convenient for many reasons such as compatibility to Google docs, slides, etc. I also love the ability to link to YouTube and other sites. I don't know if there would be a site that is easier to maneuver.

Incentivized

We've been using BJ Events with big event and it worked as good as smaller one. All meetings were international and it didn't seem like it at all, I mean the quality was great. Maybe time delay was noticeable sometimes (sound to video) but it might also be caused by poor quality of internet connection.

Incentivized

It is very easy to push out this program across our buildings. Teachers are able to use it without much trouble.

Incentivized

• There has certainly been significant cost savings on travel, particularly for internal communications. We have also found that BlueJeans has been better than other client systems like Webex. For example, we regularly switch to using BlueJeans over customer systems (Webex, Skype for Business).
• Certainly meetings are shorter and more productive, specifically our daily standup meetings with remote users.

Incentivized

• Students are able to continue learning in a remote environment
• Parents have a single, consistent organization structure to make it easy to track assignments and progress for multiple children
• Much better solution than the quickly assembled Zoom-and-gloom of the previous spring when school abruptly went remote with no planning

Incentivized