Blackboard Learn: no longer king of the hill
Blackboard Learn is the learning management system at the private Catholic college-prep high school where I work. We use it for classes as …
Blackboard Learn
Blackboard Learn
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8.0
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6.9
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5.0
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What is Blackboard Learn?
Blackboard Inc. is an enterprise learning management systems vendor. Blackboard was founded in 1997 and became a public company in 2004. The company provides education, mobile, communication, and commerce software and related services to clients including education providers, corporations and…
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What is Moodle?
Moodle is an open source Learning Management System used by educational institutions. The product is administered by the Moodle Project which is led by Moodle HQ in Australia.
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Product Details
What is Blackboard Learn?
Blackboard Inc. is an enterprise learning management systems vendor. Blackboard was founded in 1997 and became a public company in 2004. The company provides education, mobile, communication, and commerce software and related services to clients including education providers, corporations and government organizations. As of December 2010, Blackboard software and services are used by over 9,300 institutions in more than 60 countries. Blackboard Learn is the company's flagship LMS, supporting course management, test & assessment design and administration, and is extensible via Blackboard's suite of addable modules.
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Blackboard Learn Technical Details
| Operating Systems | Unspecified |
|---|---|
| Mobile Application | No |
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What is Blackboard Learn?
Blackboard Inc. is an enterprise learning management systems vendor. Blackboard was founded in 1997 and became a public company in 2004. The company provides education, mobile, communication, and commerce software and related services to clients including education providers, corporations and government organizations. As of December 2010, Blackboard software and services are used by over 9,300 institutions in more than 60 countries. Blackboard Learn is the company's flagship LMS, supporting course management, test & assessment design and administration, and is extensible via Blackboard's suite of addable modules.
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What is Blackboard Learn's best feature?
Reviewers rate Assignments highest, with a score of 8.
Who uses Blackboard Learn?
The most common users of Blackboard Learn are from Mid-size Companies and the Higher Education industry.
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August 31, 2021
Blackboard Learn: no longer king of the hill
Blackboard Learn is the learning management system at the private Catholic college-prep high school where I work. We use it for classes as well as for clubs/organizations. All classes are required to use Blackboard Learn while clubs and organizations are encouraged but not required. We treat Blackboard Learn as an extension of the physical classroom. Only students have access to Blackboard Learn, not parents/guardians. Some teachers give tests or quizzes on Blackboard Learn while others use it primarily as a communication vehicle and to distribute/collect assignments. Obviously during the spring semester of 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Blackboard Learn became the primary vehicle for education at the school.
- The import tool is fairly robust
- Online tasks/quizzes are straightforward to administer and grade
- If consistently applied across the organization, navigation can be streamlined and students know what to expect where
- The mobile app/platform is seriously lacking in stability and feature set
- Interoperability with other systems, such as school information systems, is limited (data are relatively easy to import but virtually impossible to export from Blackboard Learn)
- [In my opinion] the arrogance and intransigence of the sales force are quite disconcerting. They are no longer the only game in town and don't yet realize it.
April 20, 2021
Learning Made easy
Blackboard Learn is currently being used as the learning management software to host courses that a student enrolls for a certain semester. Almost all the activities such as quizzes, classes, assignments and more are hosted on Blackboard Learn. I have used the mobile version as well. It is the perfect answer for students pursuing distance learning education along with their respective jobs. The best part is the Panopto video integration that allows students to listen to lectures at their convenience.
- Hosting of courses associated with a particular semester
- Integration with zoom and Panopto
- Grading of the respecitive courses and also hosts the submission of student work related to the particular home work assignments, quizzes etc.,
- Blackboard Learn has some limitations when it comes to submissions
- It is not that user friendly, I had to spend some time to get a hang of it in the beginning
- I have been struggling a bit with deletion of manually added courses
April 22, 2021
Higher priced LMS, but if you can budget it, Blackboard Learn is WELL worth the expense!
We use Blackboard Learn as a course management system for providing learning content to our students, facilitating collaboration, and streamlining communications between faculty and students. We use it institution wide. Blackboard Learn allows us to deliver courses to our students 100% online, hybrid or as a means to organize and disseminate materials for in person courses.
- Blackboard Learn makes submitting assignments electronically simple and provides a variety of built-in Web-based tools like e-portfolios, wikis, and blogs that our students use to create their own content.
- Blackboard Learn is intuitive and easy to navigate from a students perspective
- Blackboard Learn has many integrations available for connecting this LMS to other tools we use at our institution.
- Blackboard Learn requires cloud-based SaaS configuration which we were not set up for initially. This was an additional step for us before deployment
- Some new release courses lack features available in legacy courses, this tends to be a problem when we roll out upgrades, as we need to extend our testing phase to ensure all courses are functional
- Blackboard Learn is expensive. In comparison to its competition, there really isn't a reason (other than name recognition) that the software should be as much higher priced from it's competition as it is.
April 21, 2021
Blackboard Learn for team work
I've used Blackboard Learn in my own area (Work Force), we use this to take Excel Courses so that our team lead keeps a track of our learning process. We started using this product because there wasn't a way of keeping a track of the new thing we were learning at the time, this has allowed everyone across my area to know which courses are still missing and which courses have already been taken.
- Easy access to modules
- Easy access to documents
- Tracking progesss
- Mobile version view
- Document sharing
- Document uploading
Blackboard Learn is used across the entire organization. It is used by professors for classes and by the administration to provide information for new employees on how to use certain solutions or procedures that are currently in place for various software solutions.
- Easy maintenance
- Good support
- Friendly people
- Bad UI (unless you migrate to BB Ultra)
- Does not integrate well with other software solutions
- It is not very user-friendly
- It could be pricey
January 19, 2021
Blackboard, more beta perhaps?
Blackboard is used college wide.
- Good for organizing content
- The content formatting features are, well, how should I say this, terrible.
April 13, 2020
Blackboard Learn Review
Blackboard is used as a platform for students to send and receive school work. This program is operated by teachers as a web-based user software device to connect them to their students. It is incredibly important now due to the current world events regarding distancing.
- It does what it is intended to do such as connecting students and teachers alike.
- It allows teachers to upload assignments online to eliminate the use of paper.
- Good platform to take tests and quizzes.
- Sign-on errors are common and it may inhibit the students' ability to submit and receive assignments as directed.
- It is hard to navigate at times if you are unfamiliar.
- Not exactly user friendly.
- Sometimes locations of assignments are not clear, very obscure.
- Not a very appealing layout.
January 31, 2020
Blackboard Learn- When you Need the Basics in Content Delivery and Instructional Management
Blackboard Learn is used primarily as an online classroom. Blackboard Collaborate can be utilized to facilitate and record real-time lectures and discussions, but the main function of Blackboard is to provide a secure online space for professors to load course guidelines, content and student grades, as well as host non-synchronous discussion boards. It is also used by academic support programs such as mentoring and tutoring to post content and planning support for student access.
- Accepts wide variety of file types.
- Choice of layout options to fit different styles of courses.
- Interface isn't very modern.
- Low use of icons and heavy text make it tricky to navigate.
January 31, 2020
Blackboard is solid from a student's perspective!
Blackboard Learn is being used by my organization primarily for e-learning for a variety of courses. It is used for reading, submitting, and tracking assignments as well as real-time feedback during assignments. Blackboard Learn "solves the problem" of holding classrooms electronically while giving students the flexibility to engage with the class on their own time with their varying schedules.
- Asynchronous classrooms.
- Clear communication of assignments.
- Semi-clunky UX.
- Slow page load times (depending on content).
September 25, 2019
Blackboard Learn: Student Engagement & Collaboration at its Finest
Blackboard Learn is used as a classroom portal for the courses that I teach. It is how I share information, course content, messages, announcements, and threaded discussions with my students. It additionally includes a submission/extraction component for submitting assignments and a direct way to privately or group email any enrollee in the course.
- Provides HTML quality course content that is easily retrievable and viewable.
- Provides multiple methods of communication: email, threaded discussions, real-time "live" online discussions, as well as grade portal.
- Allows facilitators multiple methods of grading or providing feedback: threaded discussions, rubric scoring, personal comments, inline viewer, or download/upload attachments.
- Mobile access to Blackboard Learn is rudimentary and inconsistent. I can open the website in any browser but I cannot always click on the right control column--it sometimes moves around or buttons jump so that I cannot actually complete basic functions like posting a DQ. With asynchronous teaching, it is imperative that I have function-able mobile access to Blackboard in order to be successful.
- The existing Blackboard Learn app for instructors is completely BASIC and needs much improvement. There is no ability to enhance text or use bold or italics. I can provide inline grading comments but cannot use a bank of grading comments--no copy/paste works in the inline grading of the app. I cannot grade discussion questions AT ALL in the app--only papers.
- The Blackboard Learn instructor app needs to be compatible with voice commands so that I can use voice-to-text rather than typing everything on a mobile device. There is a lot of room for improvement but the app is crucial to my ability to teach effectively with Blackboard.
January 21, 2020
An excellent product
Blackboard Learn is one of the tools used by my school district for sending out various types of communications to our families. We have two different communication platforms that we are able to choose from when sending out information and Blackboard is always the one that I prefer to use.
- It is really easy to create and save lists.
- Multiple types of communications can be sent at one time.
- It is not the easiest tool for people not as technology savvy to navigate.
- Training is needed to master all the features.
January 12, 2020
User-friendly LMS
We use Blackboard Learn as our main learning management system to offer online and hybrid courses. Blackboard Learn is used across the whole organization. Blackboard makes learning online simpler for students.
- Creating effective assessments such as quizzes and assignments.
- Make collaboration easier through group work and discuss board posts.
- Online grading may need improvement through adding new features.
- In the grade center instructors need to go into manage organization in order to arrange and reorder columns. It would be nice to be able to move columns around as in an Excel sheet.
November 30, 2019
Connecting to my students and colleges in online coursework
We use Blackboard Learn to create and manage online classrooms and course content. It's been really helpful to stay connected to students, use Google to create assignments, and coordinate with other teachers and easily communicate with students.
- Course content management.
- Communication with students.
- Scheduling assignments and class discussions.
- More third party features, beyond Google Suite.
- Connecting to our SIS can be tricky at times.
- The mobile app could use some smoothing out.
Blackboard Learn is our primary Learning Management System and is used both by our distance education program and for supplemental materials to in class instruction. It is used by faculty across campus in various colleges and departments as well as for staff training. The software has a portal which allows students to access their classes, each with its own web page, to view lessons, download files, access external links, take tests, and submit assignments.
- Lesson Managment
- Discussion Board
- Quizes
- File Submission
- Class interaction
- Comments on assignments
- Grade-book automation
February 07, 2019
Blackboard Learn, Taking Learning to the Future!
Blackboard Learn is used by multiple users, to access information, share information and access features across multiple devices and platforms. Users can access modules and other necessary information sources from any device, from anywhere, at their own convenience. It is perfect for organizations that have users who are global or not necessarily meeting at the same time in the same place, and need access to massive amounts of information that is stored in an organized format. It is quite useful for academic settings, but I can also see applicable uses for nonprofit or other environments.
- Organized modules
- Easy to use on various devices
- Easy to customize
- Chat feature could be improved
- Doesn't load quite as well on a mobile (phone) device consistently
- Better integration to a mobile app
February 06, 2019
BlackBoard learn - a solid course management system
Blackboard is the course management system used by both recent employers. I have used it for several years as a student too. The system is very reliable, easy to navigate and customize. It includes several modules, one of which is blackboard collaborate which enable live remote sessions.
Having online students is so common these days and having all course collaboration and live sessions in one secure centralized location is a necessity for both students and universities.
Having online students is so common these days and having all course collaboration and live sessions in one secure centralized location is a necessity for both students and universities.
- Instructors can easily customize the course page.
- It has the capability to do online exams, class discussions, automatic grading, and live sessions.
- Integrates with local LDAP and single sign-on services.
- Although the current graphic user interface is easy to use, it can be improved with larger fonts, dynamic menus, and attractive graphics.
- The system does not include a module to pay the school fee.
- The roster tab lacks detailed information about students.
March 08, 2019
Works to keep students engaged outside of class
All of Stony Brook University uses Blackboard Learn to maintain communication between students and educators in and out of the classroom. Assignments are posted and submitted, announcements are made to students, and discussion threads are used. Using Blackboard eliminates communication issues and encourages students to be involved outside of the classroom.
- Easy to use tabs to get to different sections of the courses
- Easy to communicate directly with the educator and other students through messaging.
- Easy to submit assignments directly by uploading.
- The mobile Blackboard app is not easy to use on my Android phone as the sizing is off and some functions do not work.
- The discussion threads are a little more difficult to navigate, between replying to the current thread or needing to start a new one.
- The grades section is not always correctly updated on my end even though the educator has posted them.
Blackboard Learn is the supported Learning Management system at the University of Kansas. It is used across the organization, with a focus on academic courses. All courses in our PeopleSoft Student Information System automatically receive a corresponding Blackboard class. It allows students and instructors to coordinate assignments and grades for academic classes, and is sometimes used as a communication tool for non-academic use.
- Number of Integrations. Up until fairly recently, Blackboard Learn was the only option that scaled well for an institution of our size. They purchased competitors, and dominated marketshare. Due to this, most integrations from publishers or other educational technologies had to create a Blackboard integration.
- Adapting to Web Standards. Blackboard is currently releasing REST APIs and LTI integrations, and encouraging these as the standards moving forward. This is an excellent direction, and will allow Blackboard to be more competitive in the future.
- Customization. Each Blackboard course can be fully customized by the Instructor, using as much or as little as each individual instructor would like. For those that enjoy complete control - this is really useful.
- Self-Hosted Option. I anticipate this to eventually be depreciated, but currently we can host our Blackboard instance - which grants full flexibility and data analysis capabilities that are not available in the managed or cloud hosted options.
- Lack of APIs. Blackboard is catching up, but other competitors are much further along since those competitors started as a web-based company. The other factor holding these back is the different hosting options. All APIs are available for cloud-hosted, but not for managed-hosted or self-hosted.
- Lack of defaults. While highly configurable, Blackboard is really intimidating for instructors used to default course structures. You can lock this down, but our users enjoy the customizability - which causes issues providing for both values. Instructors have multiple ways to do tasks - and often there isn't a clear pathway.
- Lack of focus on core. Blackboard keeps releasing new products : Analytics (usage), Transact (purchase / card system), Ally (accessibility), Predict (early warning)... while the core experience lags behind. Blackboard is trying to sell the idea that their stuff works well with their stuff... while competitors keep improving the core system and make integrations easier. Personally, I believe Blackboard needs to refocus on the core competencies.
- Lack of communication / proactivity. Blackboard relied on an integration with Crocodoc for assignment markup. Crocodoc was purchased and shuttered by Box, who had a general press release a year out. Blackboard worked with Box to replace this functionality - but DID NOT DO A GOOD JOB. Communication on progress was non-existant, it required an unplanned restart, and there was a massive feature loss. We still experience some performance issues, and it's been over a year since the switch.
- Lack of migration pathway. There are distinct differences between self-hosted and cloud-hosted. The migration path from self hosted to cloud hosted is just as complex as migrating to another LMS. Blackboard has been really pushing cloud-hosted as a better experience, but many institutions of our size have had extreme difficulty migrating and some have ultimately switched to a competitor and had an easier time migrating. If you are considering going to the cloud, Blackboard SaaS will probably be as big of a change as a competitor.
- Poor Branding. Ultra is a ubiquitous term that Blackboard has settled on, but there are too many Ultras. Ultra was originally the branding for SaaS, a technology that was Vaporware for two years and then ultimately came out half-completed. Then they started offering Collaborate Ultra, Ultra Course View and Ultra Experience. I think there is even now an Ultra theme that is available for Learn Original. They need to find another word, because it's extremely confusing for administrators - let alone instructors.
February 10, 2019
Great Tool for Learning
I've used Blackboard both as a teaching assistant and a student.
- As a student, I get mobile access and notifications about grades, announcements, and course changes that help me manage my learning.
- As an instructor, Blackboard lets me integrate a lot of different types of media, structure time released content, vary assessments, and deliver individualized learning opportunities.
- I also like the Best Practice parts of the help site -- it helps you to get ideas of how you can use the tools.
- In terms of support from Blackboard.
- I find it difficult to transfer information from one semester to another.
- Slow (even when on the same network node or high-speed cable connection) -- needs a code rewrite/optimization.
February 09, 2019
It can be configured to do anything you want. It is Blackboard's blessing and curse.
Blackboard Learn is used for the majority of courses at our university. Each class uses it differently from just posting a syllabus to a grade book, to robust use of Collaborate, discussion boards, and content submission. It is up to each professor how deep they choose to use the tool in aiding instruction.
- It can be configured to do anything you want.
- It makes it easier for the students have a common destination for information.
- I like that I can do all of my assessments and grading in one place.
- It can be configured to do anything you want. Be careful.
- Its architecture feels old, but because they support so many schools that are change adverse, it is hard to update.
January 30, 2019
Blackboard Learn: Using as a Student
I was a user of Blackboard as a student, I took a certification to further my career and it was built in Blackboard Learn. I would suggest using it in my institution, as I feel it is very user-friendly, easy to follow, and has through instructions on how to use.
- The organization of files
- You can have different tabs to separate items to make it easier for student use
- Submission of testing and assignments was clear, and easy to use.
- I did not find anything the software itself could do better, just the way the administrator had the information set up in the courses.
January 28, 2019
Making the most of a Blackboard Learning Management System
Blackboard is one of the leading Learning Management Systems (LMS) is the education industry. The platform is fairly flexible and integrates well with most Student Information Systems (SIS) allowing a school or higher education university to automate the creation of a 'website' for each section it may be running from semester to semester as well as supporting the manual creation of 1-off 'Organization' sites as needed.
Using the Blackboard LMS allows faculty who may be technical novices to easily share files, store and grade assignments and scan written submissions for originality. While the initial course shell or template is fairly basic, a user with basic HTML/CSS knowledge can unlock a lot of the system's potential. There are also ways to add javascript enhanced elements and SCORM modules from programs such as Articulate or Captivate, but that is most likely more suited for advanced technical users such as Instructional Technologist or Designers.
Using the Blackboard LMS allows faculty who may be technical novices to easily share files, store and grade assignments and scan written submissions for originality. While the initial course shell or template is fairly basic, a user with basic HTML/CSS knowledge can unlock a lot of the system's potential. There are also ways to add javascript enhanced elements and SCORM modules from programs such as Articulate or Captivate, but that is most likely more suited for advanced technical users such as Instructional Technologist or Designers.
- The assignment tool is very helpful, it allows for individual and group assignment submission and can scan all work for originality via the integration of SafeAssign. This feature also acts as a repository for resolving student grade challenges and in collecting data for accreditation efforts.
- The open HTML features allow for incorporation of video very easily through embed codes or mashup tools
- Communication - the announcement, emails, discussion boards, and group tools allow enhance the classroom and allow students to stay engaged without the need to know 50 different email addresses.
- Blackboard ingrates very well with hundred of 3rd party tools either through a building block installion on LTI link. Very help for incorporating publishing content from a textbook for example.
- The Mobile features off the site and lagging behind, especially if you try to access the site through phone on safari or chrome vs the BB Mobile app.
- While Blackboard allows for HTML and CSS it has a bad habit of throwing extra tags and other forms 'of junk' HTML after saving that slow down the system and hurt accessibility for screen readers.
- The UI of BB Learn overall is dated and in major need of modern re-design
- BB Learn lack a common search feature, mean students have no choice but the hunt and peck around course looking a specfic peice of content.
- While this may be a result of my version of the system being self-hosted I have found Blackboard to overall be a slower platform than other LMS systems such as Canvas or Coursera
December 17, 2018
Blackboard is great for student grading management
Blackboard Learn is used by almost everyone at the University of Alabama. I use it to manage student organizations and for classes I teach. For large student organizations, Blackboard is essential for keeping everyone on the same page. We use it to share documents and important information because we can ensure it will be sent to all of the necessary recipients.
- Blackboard is pretty intuitive to learn. It's not very hard to figure out what you need to do.
- The assessments are easy to create and easy for students to take. The deadlines are helpful as well.
- It's nice that there isn't a limit for the content that you are able to put on Blackboard.
- On Mac specifically, when you pull up the full grade center, for some reason it won't let you scroll over.
- Deleting everything is SO time consuming. There isn't a way to bulk delete columns for grading.
February 06, 2019
Blackboard Learn - great for classrooms
It’s being used across the university as a class hub.
- Great file repository.
- Good for in-depth documentation layouts.
- Good for record keeping.
- Better mobile integration.
- More online training.
- More walkthrough samples.
March 29, 2017
Blackboard okay and not okay
Blackboard is used as a learning platform for online and campus classes for students to access learning information. The software addresses the need of giving students access to information to learn.
- Blackboard is fairly easily to use, no large learning curve is needed.
- Blackboard has very little down time.
- Blackboard several add-on functionalities that add value.
- The clickable rubric is a great tool...although the point system should not be broken down to such tiny small points.
- Blackboard has a lot of room for improvement in terms of notifications. If a student posts an assignment or updates something there is no notification upon logging to make a professor aware.
- Using videos in Blackboard is very challenging, if you design your own and want to upload them. They used to appear on the home page but they no longer do.
- The threaded discussions are hard to follow because every thread opens rather than allowing the reader to select the threads they want to read.
- The notification for a makeup exam or an overridden grade are the same notification in the gradebook versus if the grades updated automatically as some of their competition programs do.
- Blackboard is my least favorite system to work with due to not be as user friendly as other programs.
- The clickable rubrics are great, but they should focus on whole points instead of .1, .2, .3, .4, and so on.