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 We use Mindflash for a lot of our internal training needs, and it is very versatile to accomplish your needs in training employees in a variety of different areas. I've never tried to use it for external needs, but I feel like the software at the advanced level wouldn't suit that need very well at all. At the Pro level, you get a lot more flexibility, but the cost is prohibitive for the size of our company.
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 Mindflash is very clean and user-friendly. Very easy for learners to navigate and understand. Mindflash’s reporting tool is unmatched. You can pull any type of report you could want or need. Customer service is top-notch. From our Sales Executive to our CSM, all the way up to the VP, our experience has been amazing. 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 Integration with Salesforce using professional level software. Mindflash's limited integration to only work with the higher level of Salesforce product. More brand customization for multiple product line trainings. Communication of trainers using Mindflash and sales team. We have multiple trainers sending invitations for training with no way for them to communicate with our sales team when a person has completed training. 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 The number of people using Mindflash is only going to rise and we need a system that remains easy to use for everyone involved. [update] This is especially vital now that we've lost head count in critical departments. Getting all of our training and Safety objectives met would be impossible without Mindflash.
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 The interface is just so simple to understand. It's clean and efficient. We showed Mindflash off to the Safety group, who are not computer gurus and they were beyong excited to use it.
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 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 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 Any problems or questions we have had with Mindflash have been handled promptly and effectively. I normally use the online chat option but have had to correspond with them through email and phone as well. We have never had an issue languish for weeks or months with Mindflash. They either fix the problem or let you know that the software isn't capable to handle the need at that point.
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 If you're going to develop a short course to demo the product internally, don't bother avoiding your own topics. Mindflash rolls whatever content you create during the trial into your production environment when you decide to buy. The time taken to go from not having a system to being live with Mindflash is virtually instant. What you'll be wanting for is time to develop content and people to test it out.
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 This is an alternate software that we have looked into, right now we don't have the need for the increased flexibility that
Lesson.ly provides with learning from your mobile or tablet. We haven't seen a lot of those things as particularly useful for our current training methods, but we see the quality to be similar.
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 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 Mindflash has had a positive impact on our business because it allows us to train more new users with less effort, and ensure that trainees have access to the course materials for a period of time after they have started using our software to do their daily jobs. Review of the course materials allows them to get answers to common questions without having to submit requests to our support team, thereby reducing the administrative burden on our resources. Read full review ScreenShots D2L Brightspace Screenshots Trakstar Learn Screenshots