TrustRadius Insights
Smooth User Experience: Many users have praised the smooth user experience of the product. They have mentioned that the interface is …
Overview
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…
Recent Reviews
Awards
Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards
Popular Features
- Assignments (30)9.090%
- Learning reporting & analytics (26)8.989%
- Mobile friendly (30)8.888%
- Learning content (27)6.161%
Pricing
N/A
Unavailable
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…
Entry-level set up fee?
- Setup fee optional
Offerings
- Free Trial
- Free/Freemium Version
- Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Would you like us to let the vendor know that you want pricing?
86 people also want pricing
Alternatives Pricing
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…
Product Demos
Navigating Your Course in Blackboard Learn
YouTube
Features
Return to navigation
Product Details
- About
- Competitors
- Tech Details
- Downloadables
- FAQs
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 Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 employees).
Comparisons
Compare with
Reviews and Ratings
(204)
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:
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
Attribute Ratings
Reviews
(1-4 of 4)Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
August 18, 2017
Blackboard Just So-So
Score 3 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Blackboard is the learning management system used by the faculty and students of our college. Blackboard provides an online place to manage all aspects of course administration for faculty and a place for students to access course content and grades. Blackboard is used by most faculty for at least posting a syllabus, but use of other features varies per professor.
- Blackboard has purchased a number of companies to add functionality to their product
- Their customer support is inconsistent. Sometimes it is fairly good, but right now we are more often frustrated by the lack of concern for what the customer needs. What company tells a user that they are aware that something is broken but that they are choosing to not fix it? Blackboard does.
- Things that the user needs to do are buried down a few layers and are not intuitive to find. For instance, to make a course available, the user has to go to the course control panel, click "Customization" and then "Properties." Then it is necessary to scroll down to find the "Make course available?" question and click the "Yes" radio button. This could be so much simpler! Just add a toggle button at the top of the instructor interface that says "Make Available?" with the ability to toggle between yes and no. They already do something similar with the edit course function.
- The Grade Center is clunky and not intuitive. Faculty complain most about this feature.
- Blackboard has had a neutral impact on our business objectives in that some faculty use it more than others. We don't hear much about Blackboard unless a feature is broken.
- I do think that Blackboard is very frustrating for many faculty to use.
- Canvas and Sakai
Sakai does not measure up well against Blackboard because it takes lots of manpower to maintain. It was also buggy.
From the reviews and my ability to play around in a demo account, Canvas is greatly superior to Blackboard. It is among the LMS products we would consider should we move away from Blackboard.
From the reviews and my ability to play around in a demo account, Canvas is greatly superior to Blackboard. It is among the LMS products we would consider should we move away from Blackboard.
200
Faculty and faculty support
3
Those with technical skills and problem-solving skills who have the ability to work with people.
- Distance Learning
- Traditional classroom courses where Blackboard is used to supplement the teaching learning environment
No
- Existing Relationship with the Vendor
We had been using Blackboard and our faculty were not vocal about making a change. At the time we were making the decision the main thought was there was no need to replace Blackboard because it was adequate.
I think we would accept user feedback about their experiences with Blackboard, but the decision on product would be made by the technical group. Getting too many cooks in the kitchen complicates matters.
If it were up to me only, I would have asked a couple of competing vendors in to see a demonstration of their products.
If it were up to me only, I would have asked a couple of competing vendors in to see a demonstration of their products.
No
It costs more money.
Yes
I have reported several bugs to Blackboard. Sometimes the resolution was satisfactory and sometimes not. I don't feel that Bb makes fixes in a timely way.
Nothing comes to mind.
- None of the functionality stands out as being easy or elegant when using Blackboard.
- Making a course available
- Using the Grade Center
- Most functionality is less intuitive than it should be.
Yes, but I don't use it
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.
- Students make decisions on what school they will attend based on many things, one of those is the quality of web services that the institution provides. Overall, our students are satisfied with what services Blackboard provides.
- We don't really have any data that shows that Blackboard helps with student retention. I feel that when Blackboard is running well, it's a value-neutral proposition, but if students are frustrated with the interface or with a specific software bug, their opinion of the institution goes down.
- Blackboard licensing fees go up every contract year, and while that is to be expected, I actually feel that Blackboard's inability to be agile in the education industry is a detriment to their value as a vendor. They really need to step it up if they want to retain customers.
Canvas is Blackboard's biggest competitor... I've been in the room when the CEO of Blackboard stated this fact. Their agility and ability to integrate well with other products makes their product very attractive. Canvas was not available at the time we selected Blackboard, and I feel that Blackboard has relied on the fact that the cost to switch to a new system is so high that customers will remain loyal. Overall, the value proposition that Canvas provides is hard to ignore especially as university budgets are shrinking. Desire2Learn aka Brightspace and the open-source market (Moodle, Sakai) really don't hold a candle to Canvas or Blackboard. They are just as (if not more) "clunky" and user-unfriendly as Blackboard is.
35000
Students are a large portion of the user base. They are consumers of content, takers of tests, discussion board posters. Instructors provide content to students, and use the gradebooks to provide feedback on student work. Staff and other Employees take training courses, and provide instructional design help for instructors.
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.
- Simplified delivery of electronic content to students.
- Allowed for increased technology assignments for student involvement.
- Very simple for faculty to jump in and provide content to their students and get students involved.
When we were evaluating a move from self-hosted Blackboard (version 8) in 2012, it came down to Blackboard Learn and Desire2Learn. Ultimately, we stuck with Blackboard because of faculty comfort. We had been a Blackboard customer for over a decade and faculty wanted to stick with what they knew. In the long run, Blackboard has made huge improvements over the last 5 years and we are happy with our decision to move to their Managed Hosting infrastructure.
Blackboard is used for simple classroom content delivery, all the way to 100% online classes. It is also used for staff communities, news delivery, electronic communications, etc.
3
My support staff is proficient in the use of technology and has quality communication skills.
- Vendor implemented
No
Change management was a minor issue with the implementation
- Migrating content from our self-hosted Blackboard 8 installation to Blackboard's Managed Hosting.
- Faculty, staff, and student notifications and marketing of the upcoming migration to Blackboard Learn.
Yes
Usually yes...
n/a
- Posting electronic content.
- Involving students with groups, discussion boards, assignments, etc.
- Contacting students via announcements and email.
- Some faculty struggle with the Grade Center area of Blackboard.
Yes
Their mobile applications are limited. I personally find using my devices mobile web browser to be the easier way to go.
December 12, 2014
Blackboard 9.1
Blackboard is used on our campus as the online course delivery and management system. It is also used by instructors not teaching online as a repository for notes and quizzes and as a way to communicate assignments due to class cancellations or school closure. Since this community college is located in a largely rural area with major universities some distance away, Blackboard provides the opportunity for students to continue their education while working full-time. It also allows instructors to be more creative with their course content and bring visual content into their assignments that students can do asynchronously.
- Customizable
- Easier to Navigate
- More streamlined
- Unable to use certain web browsers, for example, IE.
- Unable to print from certain browsers
- Students have problems uploading documents or creating a thread
- Increased course enrollments
- Faculty development
The previous CMS used before Blackboard was Lotus Notes. Between the two, Blackboard is much more intuitive, easier to use, and more navigable. Lotus Notes was very cumbersome to use because you had to scroll through every users comments to find the last one. There was no choice to collapse or expand the threads.
500
- Administration
- Faculty
- Staff
- Students
12
- Two Blackboard admins
- Ten pc techs, helpdesk staff, administrators
- Online classes
- Notes and Quizzes
- General campus information
- Student electronic bulletin board