Likelihood to Recommend 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.
Read full review I have found Renaissance Accelerated Reader to be well-suited for elementary readers. I don't have experience using it with high school students; however, I know that for our elementary readers, there are no shortages of tests available. Our students can read trade books, articles within the program, or even stories from our textbooks and take tests on them
Read full review Pros 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. Read full review Automatically calculating ZPD ranges. Student level ranges are automatically calculated within the system to ensure that students are correctly choosing the most appropriate books for them. Easy goal setting. Whether you want to set a blanket goal based on 20 minutes per day of reading time for the class, or you want to individually set goals up to an hour a day, AR makes it very easy to manage and set goals for your entire classroom. Goals can be adjusted as needed easily as well. Comprehension monitoring through testing. I can easily see which students are struggling on comprehension through AR book quizzes. From student scores, I can either motivate students who are rushing through books to slow down and take time to thoroughly read, or I can help students who are possibly struggling to read harder books with specific strategies that will benefit them the most. Without the testing feature of AR, I would have a lot more work to check how students are doing on their independent reading. Data that is easy to understand and share with students. From either running a report on the entire class or school to just a specific student, AR makes data tracking easy. I can share reports with students and have detailed discussions about their progress towards meeting their goals or steps to take to overcome reading challenges they are currently having. Read full review Cons 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. Read full review Lately, Accelerated Reader has been adding "New Reports" which would help single class users such as a teacher with one class. But for a person with administrative rights, it creates a bit of a hassle to get the information needed at times. Cost - Accelerated Reader is expensive. For the price paid, I feel Renaissance should include some features instead of having additional fees paid. Read full review Likelihood to Renew 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.
Read full review [Renaissance] Accelerated Reader is a great way to track student progress, motivate students to read, and measure their comprehension. Accelerated reader gives both teachers and students immediate feedback. There are countless options of books for students and can help increase student interest in books and improve students' reading ability.
Read full review Usability 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.
Read full review I would say that Accelerated Reader is a pretty user-friendly tool. The platform is easily used by teachers, administrators, and students of all grade levels and technical abilities. That being said, it would be nice to see some tweaks to the user interface to make it even easier for everyone to navigate.
Read full review Reliability and Availability 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.
Read full review I have not encountered any problems with availability
Read full review Performance 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.
Read full review Quick loading, no issues.
Read full review Support Rating 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.
Read full review Renaissance Accelerated Reader is a program I have used with students for 9 years. It is so flexible and easy to use! I have seen the amazing benefits and an increase in the minutes my students read each day. I look forward to using this program next year and learning more about how it can help increase reading in our school.
Read full review In-Person Training Did not participate in the in-person training due to distance; training was completed online
Read full review Online Training 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.
Read full review Implementation Rating 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.
Read full review Extensive training on Ren Place is necessary. There are a myriad of reports that we need help understanding. I have joined Ren Royals and have learned a lot from that support piece.
Read full review Alternatives Considered 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 .
Read full review I have not used any of the products listed. However, AR has been my choice of product. My school system choice this product because it interfaces well with all other reading and testing programs that have been purchased. It is an excellent product, but that is a given since it was developed by a teacher to address a problem that all educators deal with (How do you help a struggling reader best?). AR is the answer for me.
Read full review Scalability 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.
Read full review Because students can take tests on varying book levels.
Read full review Return on Investment 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. Read full review The goal of AR is for kids to enjoy books, spread their wings, and experience a variety of literature & genres. Children need copious amounts of reading to become good readers. Incorporating Renaissance Accelerated Reader 360 into our day sets a purpose for reading and holds children accountable. Renaissance Accelerated Reader 360 is research based. The single biggest predictor of academic success is time spent reading. This program allows for that. Renaissance Accelerated Reader 360 allows for scaffolding of reading material to get the kids into more challenging material. This program allows children to be successful and build on their strengths. Renaissance Accelerated Reader 360 empowers students to take ownership in the learning process. It gives them a voice. Renaissance Accelerated Reader 360 is a program that lets students practice and apply skills and strategies learned during mini lessons and strategy-group instruction. Read full review ScreenShots D2L Brightspace Screenshots