Class for Web vs. Microsoft Teams

Blackboard Collaborate is well suited for teaching and learning, especially online classes. When used with learning management, Collaborate allows for seamless sign-on between the users' course sites and the web conferencing platform. Collaborate is ideal for launching virtual discussions, lectures, office hours, and more. Users can easily upload files to display or share their desktop/specific applications, which is great for demonstrating course principles and meeting learning objectives. Collaborate is really good for breakout rooms, where users join or are assigned to small groups for discussions or team-based learning activities.

Incentivized

It's amazing as a daily driver for team communication, and document search/store. Also, if you're doing a lot of LONG meetings and have trouble remembering details, the AI summarization is amazing and convenient. It just works. I'm not saying I always do this, of course, but if I need to 'skim' instead of really digging into every detail from a meeting, the AI-generated summary is generally good enough that I can get away with it.

• The ability to host a number of people in a meeting and manage their participation via text and audio.
• The screen sharing features allows presenters to demonstrate procedures exactly as instructed on the screen. This also allows the presenter to permit others to share their screens if they need clarification of something or to share further ideas.
• The software gives you the freedom to use a whiteboard to draw/demonstrate concepts to students and other employees.

Incentivized

• Makes communication and collaboration easier through Chat.
• Lets us personalize and humanize face-to-face interactions through Meetings.
• Helps me effectively plan out my day through Calendar.
• Enables us to safely store and access our information through OneDrive.
• Simplifies calls and voice communication.

Incentivized

• Currently, the audio and video features are enabled separately from each other. You could end up in a situation where 6 people in a 12-person classroom have their cameras enabled and 6 different people have their microphones enabled. It would be ideal if one "Talk" button turned on that person's audio and video simultaneously.
• The number of active participants able to turn on their microphone or camera is still limited compared to other products on the market. Competing products allow dozens of participants to enable their audio and video during the entire session without having to switch back and forth as Blackboard Collaborate requires with larger sessions.
• Blackboard Collaborate still relies on Java to function. As such, it has to bundle a Java launcher application in order to open sessions. Similar products can function using HTML5 entirely within modern browsers.
• Desktop sharing is not visible on mobile apps although the chat, whiteboard, and audio is fully functional.

Incentivized

• The webinars feature has some missing functionally such as the ability for all users to use the Q&A feature (only those with a Microsoft Teams account can use it now), the ability to upload documents for attendees to easily access and download, and the ability for presenters and organizers to easily chat amongst themselves throughout the webinar.
• The "Channels" organization hierarchy could be more clear. If you have several channels set up, it can get clunky and hard to find the specific channel you are looking for.
• The MS Planner tool lacks functionality and organization. You cannot assign more than one person to a task and it's confusing when you try to share tasks with people - it would be nice if they were automatically added to someone's calendar.

Incentivized

It is a tool that faculty likes to use. It has so much flexibility to allow students to see a class even if they happen to not be available in the classroom.

Incentivized

Microsoft Teams is included with our Office 365 subscription and we have no intention of migrating off of Office 365 and Microsoft products. Since Microsoft Teams is included for free with our Office 365 subscription, and since we enjoy all the features, benefits, and functionality, there is no question that our team will continue to use the product

Incentivized

I feel that Blackboard Collaborate does a lot of things right. It’s great for educational purposes and may be better for some age levels than others. I feel that they may benefit from making features that distinguish the types of learning environments there are. Primary schools won’t be operating the same as high schools or universities and may need completely different options and features. As well as private schools and public schools. As they continue to improve and add more features the platform will be even better and more tailored to each of the end users.

Incentivized

I find that the chat function itself is quite clean, but once you incorporate the rest of the UI it becomes quite clunky. It feels as though there's too many features in one place, and that leads to it becoming convoluted and a little bit tedious to use. Due to that notifications can get missed which can lead to some tricky situations when working. I do find that it is easy to pick up though and help is readily available with a good support centre.

Incentivized

The availability of the software is quite impressive. You can access it at any time that you want and from anywhere that you want, but that depends on how the software is set up by the University. There might be sudden outages due to not having enough space on your database, which we had that very issue happen recently here at our University. During that time, you could not access their blackboard at all until it was brought up online again.

Incentivized

Rare, but outages do happen

Incentivized

The performance of the software is remarkable. The loading speed of the pages is more than satisfying, it all depends on the users internet package. So far, there wasn't any issue of Blackboard slowing down other software or systems when integrated with them

Incentivized

Sometimes about once a week I get a message that says "Sorry, there seems to be something wrong". But it goes away in a few minutes.

Incentivized

The support has been very good. We integrate Blackboard into our learning management system so everything is seamless for users. Most issues arise from the user's browser configuration, cookies, and other privacy settings, not from the tool itself. Collaborate is pretty reliable with strong audio and video quality. Support has been helpful when we've had the occasional quirk, again more likely due to a user-side challenge than the platform itself.

Incentivized

The overall support provided by Microsoft for Microsoft Teams has been quite good but there is still some room for improvements. Microsoft needs to proactively work on fixing the open bugs in order to provide a seamless experience to the users. But over the service and experience provided by the Microsoft team have been quite satisfactory.

Incentivized

I find everything I need for my day-to-day work.

Incentivized

I believe Blackboard Collaborate is a great app/platform, but like similar products; it should be used in tandem with alternatives. Blackboard Collaborate has features that I find in other apps/platforms, yet some are easier to learn and use. Such is the case with the feature to work in different groups, and switching between groups. Similarly, using the chat whilst sharing screen is a lot easier than with alternative platforms. I do believe it could benefit from certain features such as Miro's participation tracking software, when using the whiteboard app, and maybe some improvement to video/sound quality; yet Blackboard Collaborate is most definitely a useful platform for meetings, workshops, and classes.

Incentivized

Breakout rooms are a very good feature that should be added to the platform. Google Meet ranks above Teams on the web, as it's pretty lightweight; Teams tries to do so much, making it very slow or unstable when just using the web version. Teams is superior to Zoom when it comes to chat and integration with other platforms.

Incentivized

The reason for this rating is that the software is a pretty good tool that can be utilized for use in all of the Universities around the world. It has the capability to fulfill the needs of various different education systems. Although, there are slight improvements that are needed, therefore the rating is at 8.

Incentivized

It does not appear to have a limit to how many teams and employees we can have using it

Incentivized

• Our implementation has been gradual over the last 2 semesters. Students who have used it to access live academic support despite being unable to drive in for face to face sessions have been extremely happy. It is gradually boosting student morale for offsite students, who have long felt they were unable to access services that were paid through fees with their tuition.
• Multiple support services who have wanted to provide online support but were unsure how they could are more empowered to do so now. The current mood is "what else can we offer online through this, workshops, advising, live broadcast of student org meetings"?

Incentivized

• Allow smooth communication with team members, clients, and other internal and external partners globally.
• Provide strong security features to ensure secure communication and confidence when sharing sensitive information during our meetings and group calls.
• When working on collaborative projects, we can work together in the same document in real time.

Incentivized