D2L Brightspace vs. Zoom Events & Webinars

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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Zoom is well-suited for all companies. The functionality can range from basic to supercharged with all the bells and whistles; it is just a matter of what package level works best for you and your company. Having used multiple iterations of Zoom, it really relies on you and your company’s use case.

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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.

• Zoom calendar integration is a great way to see what calls are upcoming
• Ease of use for screen sharing and video call settings
• Zoom Workplace is reliable at blocking out external noise that should be muted from actual conversation taking place in calls

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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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• I wish there were more polling options available in Zoom in general, and this extends to both webinar polling and post-webinar surveys. Could certainly do with a more robust polling feature set.
• Setting up Registration for Zoom webinars can be very tricky, and I usually advise against webinar registration. The fact that users have to manually download an .ics to add it to their O365 calendars after registering means lots of issues with users attempting to join after registering early.
• I would have complained about lack of breakout rooms for webinars, or the fact that the practice room can't be turned back on after it was turned off, but Zoom recently implemented webinar breakout rooms plus the Backstage feature, so both of these common complaints are now fully addressed!

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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.

We will be renewing with Zoom as long as it continues to meet our needs for client and lead outreach needs in a robust manner. With little error and an easy to use interface, Zoom has met our needs and exceeded our expectations. The cost is right and with a short learning curve, Zoom has been an easy decision to make and maintain.

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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.

Zoom Events is complex, but gets "almost easy" with experience and good guidance. I tell people, "Hosting a meeting is like driving a car; hosting a webinar is like driving an 18-wheeler; and hosting a Zoom Event is like flying a commercial airliner." You need experience, training, and ongoing guidance to be good at Zoom Events. Zoom has staff that knows everything there is to know about Zoom Events, but finding them and reaching them isn't easy. There aren't many consultants out there that are affordable and experienced.

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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.

Zoom [Video Webinar] has online web portal where user can take control of the meetings and their settings. It provides details of all the meeting happened and also provides participants list. It has support for webinars and recording also. Zoom [Video Webinar] gave special cloud permissions for paid users also from web portal and that can help in saving disk space.

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.

Implementation was very feasible during our initial usage of the Zoom after COVID-19.

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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.

Zoom Workplace stacks up better than Microsoft Teams in terms of general meeting capabilities, webinar and live event capabilities, user experience, and how slick it is generally - it's a nicer environment where things feel more intuitive and professional. Teams is laggy and slow, feels outdated. Google Meet doesn't have as many filtering options and nuanced capabilities. Zoom integrates well with a wider tech stack.

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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.

• Being able to quickly set up and run webinars for our teammates using the templates saves us time which equals money.
• Using our saved Webinar templates ensures we are keeping on brand and adding the items requested by our legal and branding teams which saves time and frustration for all involved.
• Webinars allow us to upskill our teammates faster without having to create a stand alone training. We can invite them to a hot topic webinar where they can learn, ask questions, and immediately take action on the topic.

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