Brightspace is an academic and corporate learning management platform. It provides core e-learning features, as well as mobile accessibility and granular personalization and analytics insights.
N/A
Revel
Score4 out of 10
N/A
Revel from Pearson supports students with note taking, assessments, and other classroom tasks, and integrates with commonly used LMS.
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Top Hat
Score8 out of 10
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Top Hat supports student engagement for higher education. Grounded in learning science, the platform and content solutions help educators create interactive, personalized learning experiences with the goal of boosting student engagement, belonging, and success.
$35
per semester per student
Pricing
D2L Brightspace
Revel
Top Hat
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
1 term
$35
per semester per student
1 year
$58
per year per student
4 years
$96
48 months per student
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
D2L Brightspace
Revel
Top Hat
Free Trial
Yes
No
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Yes
No
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
No setup fee
No setup fee
Additional Details
Must contact vendor for pricing information. 30-day free trial is available.
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.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Pearson Revel is probably best suited for distance learning of large sections where there is little time for discussion and grading assignments manually is prohibitive. I would prefer not to use it with small classes and traditional classes.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Top Hat is well suited for courses where students are comfortable with utilizing online learning management system as part of their course contents. It is more appropriate to use Top Hat as a stand-alone learning management system or if the school happens to have it integrated to the system. It is not recommended to use Top Hat and another platform or system for students as this would be too much for students.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
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.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
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.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Unfortunately, there are some videos that do not play, or situations where the video does not match the question content. These are bugs that should be attended to by Pearson, but although I have reported them (along with students), they have not been remedied.
Instructors who would prefer to use only the digital text do not have the option to purchase the text without the platform.
Because the text and software are integrated, there are no "page numbers" as in other digital texts which makes it hard to reference a particular section in a lecture, assignment, or presentation.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
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.
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.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
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.
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.
In my opinion, McGraw-Hill Connect is by far much better than Pearson Revel. It has more functionality. I think the McGraw-Hill SmartBook is better than the Pearson Revel (which is merely a reading app). The SmartBook allows instructors customization and it helps students to master the materials better than just a reading app. In my experience, McGraw-Hill provides exception customer support. They always reply to my questions in a timely manner. I have used both Pearson Revel and McGraw-Hill Connect and I will have to say that I will not be going back to use Pearson Revel.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Top Hat generally stacks up pretty well against other industry leading or popular learning management systems. Top Hat is comparable to learning management systems used in most educational institutions. The features such as allowing the educator to create an interactive experience by leveraging tools such as quizzes and polls is comparable. Data on student performance is also a helpful feature that is comparable to that of other similar learning management systems.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
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.
NEGATIVE: The platform is less expensive than a printed text, but students can use OER's for free. This is especially important at the community college level where students tend to have less financial resources for education.
NEGATIVE: After the course completes, the student has nothing to use as a reference. They cannot go back and view the content, nor can they print any of the content.
NEGATIVE: The student pays for the learning platform and content which includes a large number of activities and resources. While this seems to be a positive thing, students (and instructors) can get overwhelmed with the number of activities and resources available. Some students won't use any of the resources at all.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
