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
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.
$775
per month
Pricing
D2L Brightspace
Tovuti LMS
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Tovuti Pro - Up to 50 Users
$775
per month
Tovuti Pro - Up to 250 Users
$945
per month
Tovuti Pro - Up to 500 Users
1,325
per month
Tovuti Pro - Up to 1,500 Users
1,925
per month
Tovuti Enterprise - More than 1,500 Users
Let's Talk!
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
D2L Brightspace
Tovuti LMS
Free Trial
Yes
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Yes
Yes
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
$2,500 Starting Price, Per Company, One-Time
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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!
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.
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
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.
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.
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 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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
