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What is Blackboard Learn by Anthology?
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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- Assignments (30)9.090%
- Learning reporting & analytics (26)8.989%
- Mobile friendly (30)8.989%
- Learning content (27)6.161%
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What is Blackboard Learn by Anthology?
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 Open LMS?
Open LMS (formerly Moodlerooms) is an open source learning management system for educational institutions, formerly supported by Blackboard, and now part of the Learning Technologies Group.
What is Tovuti LMS?
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…
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What is Blackboard Learn by Anthology?
Blackboard Learn enables educators to deliver the inclusive, consistent educational experiences learners design, while operating alongside current tools and integrations. Backed by a community of millions of students, instructors, and administrators across more than 70 countries, Blackboard Learn has supports collaboration with educators.
With hundreds of SaaS based features that foster collaboration, personalize the learning experience, extend accessibility, and keep learners engaged, Blackboard Learn provides collaborative workflows for students and instructors alike. Some key benefits include:
Mobile-friendly course experience
Blackboard Learn encourages a more
consistent experience across a student’s courses, allowing them to more
easily locate what they need, even on-the-go.
The best test taking experience for learners
Flexible assessment types and customizable feedback options allow instructors to support
unique learning needs.
An inclusive learning environment
Every learner is unique and expects a
personalized learning experience. Blackboard Learn empowers
students to express their identity and present themselves as they want to.
No charge for crucial data
Institutions, instructors and learners
need access to actionable data insights to create engaging learning
experiences. This is part of a Blackboard Learn license, enabling learners to keep track of their
own progress and get the support they need, and empowering instructors identify struggling students early on.
An LMS built in collaboration with educators
Built in collaboration with instructors and learners from all over the world, Anthology states they focus their product roadmap based on user needs. Its users help guide the direction of Learn through the insider program, weekly focus groups, Anthology Idea Exchange, and a community site.
Blackboard Learn by Anthology Features
Learning Management Features
- Supported: Course authoring
- Supported: Course catalog or library
- Supported: Player/Portal
- Supported: Mobile friendly
- Supported: Progress tracking & certifications
- Supported: Assignments
- Supported: Compliance management
- Supported: Learning administration
- Supported: Learning reporting & analytics
- Supported: eLearning
- Supported: Assessments
- Supported: Live online learning
- Supported: In-person learning
- Supported: Video learning
- Supported: SCORM-compliant
- Supported: Social learning
- Supported: Gamification
- Supported: GDPR Compliant Learning
- Supported: Single Sign On (SSO) Enabled Learning
Blackboard Learn by Anthology Screenshots
Blackboard Learn by Anthology Videos
Blackboard Learn by Anthology - Product Overview
An overview of Blackboard Learn Ultra presented by Anthology's VP of Product, Jim Chalex.
Blackboard Learn by Anthology Competitors
Blackboard Learn by Anthology Technical Details
| Deployment Types | On-premise, Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based |
|---|---|
| Operating Systems | Windows, Linux, Mac |
| Mobile Application | Apple iOS, Android, Mobile Web |
| Supported Languages | Arabic, Chinese- Simplified, Chinese- Traditional, Danish, Dutch, English- Australia, English- United Kingdom, English- United States, French- Canada, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Portuguese- Brazilian, Portuguese- Portugal, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, Welsh, Czech, Polish, Malay, Thai, |
Blackboard Learn by Anthology Downloadables
Frequently Asked Questions
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.
Canvas, Infor Learning Management (LMS), and D2L Brightspace are common alternatives for Blackboard Learn by Anthology.
Reviewers rate Learning administration highest, with a score of 9.9.
The most common users of Blackboard Learn by Anthology are from Enterprises (1,001+ employees).
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Community Insights
TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!
- Recommendations
Based on user reviews, here are the three most common recommendations for Blackboard Learn:
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Consider Blackboard Learn for higher education and communication with parents. Users recommend it as the learning management system of choice, especially for higher education institutions. It is also recommended for effective communication with parents.
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Explore and utilize interactive functions. Many users find Blackboard Learn easy to manage and recommend taking the time to explore and utilize its interactive functions. The platform is considered convenient for classes and easy to use.
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Take advantage of Blackboard's tools for education. Users believe that Blackboard Learn offers a complete and effective educational forum. It is recommended for institutions with a large number of students, as it allows for uploading assignments, having timed tests, and recording live videos. Expert guidance is suggested during implementation.
While these are the most common recommendations, it is also advised to do research and consider the return on investment before choosing a learning management system. Additionally, some users suggest exploring alternative options and trying trials of other systems before making a final decision.
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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 28, 2020
Blackboard Learn offers easy to use content management
Blackboard Learn is a learning management system which allows instructors the ability to host course content, discussion boards, quizzes, and assignments in an easy-to-use interactive online system. Students access Blackboard Learn to review course materials that have been organized into sections and folders in a logical organizational structure. Each section inside a Blackboard Learn course can contain readings, assignments, discussions, and anything needed by students for that particular course module.
- Easy to use course navigation.
- Icons make it easy to distinguish content types.
- System announcements remain for months or years.
- Confusion can exist between the top-level navigation and course navigation.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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
September 08, 2017
Great collaboration between Students and Teachers
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
I used Blackboard back in college and it was a great tool for connecting students with their professors. It made it so easy to access assignments or different handouts from class that you may have missed. In addition, it provides a way for you to virtually hand in assignments if you miss class or if it's easier for the professor to do it that way. The platform also allows for collaboration among student groups for class, because you're able to have discussion boards and your own group pages to collaborate with one another.
- Collaboration
- Discussion
- Connecting educators and students
- User-friendly
- Access to assignments
- Access to class information/updates
- Not very visually appealing
- Would be nice if all professors adopted it, some refuse to use it
- Frequently get errors when sometimes handing in assignments or uploading documents
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.
September 26, 2016
Blackboard is an easy to use LMS.
I have worked for multiple institutions that have used Blackboard as its primary LMS for online course delivery. Blackboard Learn integrates with several publisher textbooks, such as Pearson and McGraw-Hill. However, without an integrated CMS, user and course data must be managed manually, which can be time-consuming and tedious if mismanaged.
Blackboard Collaborate could use some improvement as it does not function on par with comparable video conference software. Its integration into Blackboard makes Collaborate one less system for learners to log into, but its functionalities are limited. Adobe Connect can be linked within Blackboard, but still launches externally.
Blackboard Collaborate could use some improvement as it does not function on par with comparable video conference software. Its integration into Blackboard makes Collaborate one less system for learners to log into, but its functionalities are limited. Adobe Connect can be linked within Blackboard, but still launches externally.
- Textbook integration: Instructors can easily pair courses with publisher content, such as quizzes, educational videos, and online texts.
- Discussion boards: Students can easily discuss topics in Blackboard forums, which offers nested views for easier organization of replies.
- The grade book is easy to manage data and set up.
- Easy for learners to access across institiutions because Blackboard is an industry standard.
- Blackboard needs to improve their mobile access as it should be integrated into Learn, not a separate entity altogether.
- Blackboard Collaborate crashes and freezes during delivery of live training events and it has minimal functionality.
- The Common Cartridge does not function well when moving content from one LMS to another. It loads everything as a link and opens in a new plain text window, making workflow tedious. If migrating many courses between Blackboard, and say, Canvas, for example, Blackboard will recommend a third party company to handle the migration instead of fixing the issue in their system to get the Common Cartridge to load properly.
Blackboard is the enterprise course management solution at Grand Valley State University (GVSU). All faculty, staff, and students have accounts on the system and every course each semester has a Blackboard course site available for faculty to use in their teaching. In addition, organization sites are used by a wide array of departments and student groups.
In addition to traditional face to face courses, the Blackboard learning environment is used by GVSU's online and hybrid classes as the virtual classroom, enabling faculty to deliver engaging content and media while providing active learning-based assignments and assessments which include student feedback. Blackboard powers a collaborative and high-touch campus community with communication tools that span the range of asynchronous (announcements, email, discussion boards, etc.) to synchronous tools that include Blackboard Enterprise Instant Messaging and real-time live capabilities with Blackboard Collaborate.
By leveraging the system to provide role-based information through personalized information with the Blackboard Community system portal, the university can fine tune messaging and help to communicate through the clutter. In addition, the Enterprise Survey tool within the Blackboard system helps to deliver surveys and serves as an effective way to learn the pulse of the faculty, staff, and students.
Blackboard powers the networked learning environment at GVSU.
In addition to traditional face to face courses, the Blackboard learning environment is used by GVSU's online and hybrid classes as the virtual classroom, enabling faculty to deliver engaging content and media while providing active learning-based assignments and assessments which include student feedback. Blackboard powers a collaborative and high-touch campus community with communication tools that span the range of asynchronous (announcements, email, discussion boards, etc.) to synchronous tools that include Blackboard Enterprise Instant Messaging and real-time live capabilities with Blackboard Collaborate.
By leveraging the system to provide role-based information through personalized information with the Blackboard Community system portal, the university can fine tune messaging and help to communicate through the clutter. In addition, the Enterprise Survey tool within the Blackboard system helps to deliver surveys and serves as an effective way to learn the pulse of the faculty, staff, and students.
Blackboard powers the networked learning environment at GVSU.
- Blackboard is an effortless, easy-to-use, and scalable environment that includes a suite of tools and capabilities that enhance face to face teaching while powering high quality online and hybrid teaching and learning.
- Blackboard empowers universities, colleges, and K12 schools with the ability to extend the boundaries of the classroom through content delivery, assessment, and a suite of communication tools.
- Blackboard provides an environment of customization, personalization, and integration through the Building Blocks program. This provides an effective way to extend the capabilities of the system through the addition of third party, open source, and home grown applications.
- Blackboard is focused on accessibility and the support of a variety of standards that include LTI and ADA.
- As Blackboard has grown in adoption, popularity, and use over the years, one challenge has been supporting a multitude of users and campus constituencies that are running a wide variety of hardware and software versions. The Blackboard listserv community has come along side of users to assist users by the sharing of clients, along with a newly renewed focus on end user support.
- With the wealth of tools and capabilities, as well as Blackboard acquisitions over the years, the integration of these tools has sometimes lagged and taken longer due to competing priorities with support, new product development, and maintenance. With new leadership at Blackboard in the past few years, the integration of a variety of solutions and tools is now a clear priority.
Blackboard is used as a course management system on campus at our institution. It's utilized for courses, training, and special projects. It allows instructors to teach online as well as provide online materials, assignments, and exams for on-campus or hybrid courses. It is being used as a training method for some training programs and initiatives on campus to provide course materials and asynchronous training as well as a supplement to face-to-face training. For special initiatives and projects, this is being used to collaborate and communicate with team members.
- Blackboard provides a service where you can lock down content to a particular audience, which is very useful for coursework.
- Blackboard has a large number of features, which allows instructors to implement their course in whatever way they see fit. Many less mature products on the market today do not have quite as many features.
- Blackboard is a mature product, with years of experience in the LMS market. When implementing a product with less maturity, it's more difficult to gauge whether or not there will be significant changes in the future for products and/or company structure.
- Blackboard's interface is old and clunky. They are developing a new "Ultra" experience, but it's only available to a very limited number of customers. This old design makes it less than pleasant for sophisticated web users, and students are becoming more sophisticated in their usage of online technology.
- Blackboard does have a feature rich environment, however these features are often overly complicated and buggy. Blackboard needs to work on making their system more easy to use and get out of the way to allow instructors to teach.
- Administrator visibility and statistics are available... for an extra fee. Many institutions cannot afford to increase their licensing costs, so Blackboard needs to find out a way to make some useful information available in their core product for no additional fees.
- Increased integration with "the cloud" such as OneDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox, and the like would make it much easier for students to submit assignments, and for instructors to add content to their courses.
September 15, 2015
Blackboard Learn and their Managed Hosting architecture works!
Blackboard is used across the entire university and is an integral part of every college. Blackboard is used for things as simple as electronic file delivery and emailing students, and as complex as 100% online course delivery.
- Blackboard is very easy for novice technology users to pick up and begin to build a course. They have really expanded on their online help documentation over the last couple years to facilitate new users to the product.
- It is very easy to integrate Blackboard with our SIS system for automatic course creation and enrollment adds and drops. We have automated everything and have little to no hands-on for higher administrative tasks.
- Behind the Blackboard Support is quick to respond when tickets are opened requesting software updates, application bugs, usage questions, etc.
- One major flaw in Blackboard Learn is their Software Updates module. This module is supposed to allow hosted customers, such as ourselves, to be able to apply updates to the software on our own time. Unfortunately, almost every update has this disclaimer: "Managed Hosting clients should create a case on Behind the Blackboard to schedule the recommended server restarts after Building Blocks are updated. To expedite the scheduling process, please include a desired day and time for the restarts to begin." The Software Updates module is pointless if we can't run those updates ourselves.
- There are little issues that pop up on occasion, such as template colors on new courses occasionally not being set correctly and odd error messages that could be a bit more detailed, but all in all, the application has been very bug free for us since we moved to Managed Hosting (Blackboard's hosting service) in 2013.
- Blackboards mobile applications are fairly bare-boned and don't offer anything more than what you can get via a mobile web browser.
March 13, 2015
Blackboard Review- Chalk and Eraser?
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Blackboard was used as an online resource for courses in all departments at the University of Georgia. It served as a tool to disseminate syllabi, course readings, handouts, Power Point slides, notes, and study guides. It also allowed instructors to create discussion boards for students to share their thoughts, questions, and comments regarding course topics. Some instructors used Blackboard as a means for collecting written assignments and administering quizzes. Finally, it served as an online database for grades and course progress. It addressed several problems, including: handing out readings/course packets, administering quizzes, and making sure that students had a safe space for sharing their comments with their peers as well as with their instructors.
- The email service in Blackboard allowed teachers to send group messages to the entire class very easily.
- The discussion board feature of Blackboard helped facilitate group discussion and gave students who may have been shy in class or did not think of a comment in time a place to share their thoughts.
- The grade book feature of Blackboard allowed students to quickly access their progress in the course.
- Posting slides and presentation notes allowed students to come to class more prepared.
- The email service operated only within Blackboard. In order to have messages forwarded out of the system, one needed to change the settings. This led to a number of emails being lost, especially when students were not familiar with the system.
- Posting course readings online could be problematic because students would not take the time to read articles on their computer or devices. Hard copies tended to get better results.
- Discussion boards could sometimes be hard to track. Replies to user comments could get lost in the board, resulting in a lack of response.
February 24, 2014
Blackboard is A-OK!
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Blackboard was used by the organization I worked for previously as the primary system for the online classroom. It was used across the entire organization to facilitate learning and communication between students and faculty members. IT staff such as myself also had access to it to support users when technical issues arose. The Blackboard platform created a more streamlined and easy-to-use classroom for the students; much better than previous versions.
- Blackboard allows users to communicate with each other very well. Communication is one of the most important factors in an online classroom, and through the use of the Mail tool, Discussion boards, and the Gradebook, students were able to have easy access to their instructors and speak back and forth freely.
- Blackboard integrated support tools such as TurnItIn very well also. Having modules such as TurnItIn integrated into the classroom interface gave instructors the help they needed to make sure students were completing their work ethically. Having the flexibility to add these types of tools as needed is a great strength for Blackboard.
- Blackboard's administrative options are also a strength, I believe, because as a support analyst, I needed to be able to see what my users were seeing. Blackboard allowed us to see both the student and faculty view to best assist both of these types of users when they encountered problems in the classroom.
- During my time as a support analyst, many users would complain that the online classroom timed out entirely too quickly. Now as an IT professional, I understand that timeout is completely necessary for the safety and security of the user's account, but perhaps a longer timeout period could be set as a compromise.
- Integration with Java functionality was always a huge problem with users, especially when new versions came out. They would be unable to add attachments, use the HTML creator, and sometimes have issues with viewing Grades as well. Now some of this could possibly be attributed to user error, but perhaps the use of another tool that is not as volatile as Java would be of better use in the online classroom.