D2L Brightspace vs. Cengage WebAssign vs. Offensive Security Cybersecurity Courses and Certifications

If you're an educational institution (K-12, Higher Ed, etc.), this is an amazing tool, and it will provide you all the functionality to support anything you may want and need it to do. If you are looking at Brightspace as a tool for corporate training, I'm not sure exactly how good or bad it will be for you. My guess would be that it likely depends on your organization's size. Along that line, what I can speak to is how we use it for our customized training and in-house professional development/training, and it works fantastically for that. While we primarily use it for normal higher ed coursework, we regularly do training and professional development for all of our employees and I manage those along with our HR department. Because we use it for many other things as well, all of our employees are familiar with the product, which makes our trainings go that much smoother and makes my job that much easier.

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Cengage WebAssign is similar to other online textbook softwares I've used while teaching accounting online. It's a stable platform and seems easy for students to use, even if they are not extremely computer savvy.

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For cybersecurity practitioners interested in advancing their skillset in deeply technical matters, Offensive Security Cybersecurity Courses and Certifications offers some of the most well respected, up to date, technically challenging and comprehensive training courses out there; however, users must be very disciplined, determined and resourceful in order to make the most of the high quality content on offer since good time management is critical and "Try Harder" isn't just a motto for Offensive Security Cybersecurity Courses and Certifications given the content could frustrate some inexperienced users that may be pressed for time and don't have enough drive to spend learning a good amount of possibly unfamiliar but essential content and concepts

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• Allowing users to embed content links from YouTube or Google Drive enables learners to experience a richer lesson.
• Providing a powerful editor that allows developers to also include content from Adobe Stock as well as textbook publishers and cloud storage companies gives more power and creative ability to instructors.
• Providing scaling for mobile and traditional computer systems ensures students will not have issues on the go.
• The customization of home pages and groups enable courses to be used for small training sessions with breakout groups, large courses with separate sections, and even just more engaging courses that present themed icons and logos.

• Content is comprehensively laid out in a clear manner
• Content is regularly kept up to date with the latest techniques seen today
• Content doesn't assume too much about the reader's existing knowledge levels
• Labs are representative and designed to emulate what could happen in real life
• Certifications are well respected and widely recognised in the security industry
• Prices are not that expensive compared to other vendors etc.

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• One can feel a bit rushed on the Brightspace platform during the log-out period. Security requirements may require this, but it makes end-users more conscious about getting through content than taking notes.
• From my experience, there is not a direct connection between the platform and Outlook.
• Some content on the platform can feel redundant.

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• The exams are quite hard to pass and some require a lot of hours to be spent on them which might leave some exhausted
• Some of the content can be hard to remember since there is a lot of syntax that might be intimidating to users not familiar with something similar from before
• Perhaps consider more specific, tailored courses rather than courses which cover many topics at once which might not necessarily be within the same niche
• More human to human interaction could be beneficial to prepare for the exams sometimes

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I would never give any system a perfect score. In the technology environment today we need to be constantly looking at ways to improve the user experience and LMS companies like Desire2Learn need to know that we have options today with other systems and they need to stay current with features and listen to their customers.

Overall, the learning environment works as expected. However, there are plenty of bugs. For example, for a few versions, trying to print out a PDF from the Content screen in several browsers would produce a blank page. We inform D2L support about these issues, most of which are known issues. However, they are very slow to respond. D2L seems to spend more time selling than actually coding and testing their product. Most of the issues are not major -- however, there have been a few that are unbelievable. In fact, this past week we had a sudden issue where the "Submit" button in quizzes would not appear if users had a certain browser/operating system combination. This is a major problem, if students cannot submit their exams! D2L is slow to respond to these kinds of situations, which do occur more often than I would like.

Both students and instructor enjoy the 24-hoiur access. After, all isn't that the point of online learning. As an instructor located in an Eastern time zone state it is great to connect with students located in a Pacific time zone state. I have gotten comments about the early hours I am in the course room grading assignments . . . 4:00 a.m. PST; 7:00 a.m. EST So, it's sleep time for my students and "first cup of coffee" time for me.

Easy to navigate; little to no delay from one section of the course room to another; actually fun to use after overcoming the learning curve.

I have had excellent support from Desire2Learn. Any ticket that I submit is acknowledged immediately and the correction is usually almost as quick. We use this for thousands of classes and it is pretty well liked by both faculty and students. We have been using it for almost 4 years now and most of our instructors have become pretty proficient with it.

Did not participate in the in-person training due to distance; training was completed online

The training provided online did not, necessarily, fit the version of the system that I was using. Screens were somewhat different and not all options were readily available. This could have been due to customization on the part of my institution however, I rather believe it was due to version changes and training materials not yet being updated.

The D2L implementation team listened to our concerns and built a system based upon our needs. We wanted to keep them after the initial implementation.

I have used Blackboard Learn 8 and 9. I am currently learning about Canvas. Blackboard is overall much clunkier and lacks the intuitive feel in some parts of D2L. Its grade book is much harder to control and manipulate than D2L's. Its navigation menu can be more radically modified from the default than D2L's, but this doesn't seem that useful to me. Discussions in Blackboard can be more easily reorganized than in D2L, but no grading of discussions is possible. Blackboard Assignments is a good innovation which allows markup directly in the students' submissions, but it displays student work in a confusing manner that doesn't allow for any customization, and its markup options need further tweaking. Furthermore, no rubrics can be used in Blackboard in any way to grade any kind of work (that I am aware of). Overall, I would choose D2L over Blackboard.

I think all of these softwares are fairly similar in set up and ease of use. I am provided Cengage WebAssign with my pre-built SNHU courses.

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Offensive Security Cybersecurity Courses and Certifications are very comprehensive, regularly kept up to date and, unlike some other courses out there, are quite challenging and technically demanding even for industry colleagues who've been in the field for many years; for this reason, Offensive Security Cybersecurity Courses and Certifications is excellent for your more senior cyber security analysts/engineers as it will enable these technical experts in your organisation to further enhance their knowledge and learn some new tricks that they can then bring back to the workplace to share with the rest of the team

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During my first semester working with Desire2Learn the integrated learning management system was more down than up. This meant reconfiguring assignment due dates, frustration for both the instructor, students, and help desk staff. After an upgrade, Desire2Learn has been reliable.

• I cannot speak to whether this system is less expensive than the more fully featured Blackboard, but employees are far less efficient, frustrated, and require frequent calls to the help center to set up fairly simple course templates.
• I have been asked to consider teaching courses which will be completely online at my current institution. I have done such online courses several times at other universities, but I have decided Desire2Learn is too frustrating and cumbersome to do so. I am now exploring using Google Drive to teach a course online. Otherwise, I will not teach online until required or I find an alternate system.

• Labs have allowed us to safely test new offensive as well as defensive techniques
• Certifications are widely recognised and allow us to showcase our team's maturity to external parties when required
• Content is very comprehensive so this lessens the need for covering the same topics in our internal knowledgebases
• The platforms that Offensive Security Cybersecurity Courses and Certifications have setup helped showcase the benefits and drive adoption of infrastructure as code in our own organisation

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