Blackboard for Universities
June 01, 2021

Blackboard for Universities

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Blackboard Collaborate

Blackboard Collaborate was used by many professors and teaching assistants at our university to conduct classes, review and study sessions, lectures, presentations, etc. Blackboard is already used for most if not all of the courses offered here so it’s easy to transition to using another product with the same login credentials to ensure simplicity and ease of access.
  • You can kick out people who are disruptive or not meant to be in the room.
  • Ability to see who’s talking through highlights
  • Options for cameras on or off depending on preference
  • Sometimes sound quality is poor
  • Difficult to monitor the chat with many users
  • Could incorporate a list with the raise hand feature to see who raised their hand and when
  • Reduced costs- no need to purchase extra conferencing software
  • Efficiency- one platform for everything
  • Improved value- allowed classes to meet online live when we couldn’t in person

Do you think Blackboard Collaborate delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Blackboard Collaborate's feature set?

Yes

Did Blackboard Collaborate live up to sales and marketing promises?

I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process

Did implementation of Blackboard Collaborate go as expected?

I wasn't involved with the implementation phase

Would you buy Blackboard Collaborate again?

Yes

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.
Sometimes they do planned maintenance. Depending on the time zone you’re in, this may be in the middle of the night. That’s great. Sometimes this maintenance isn’t completed overnight however, and you need to use the platform and it is down. I’ve never been able to successfully contact them to report an outage or get assistance when it is down. I just have to wait until it comes back up to go to class, review sessions, etc.
Blackboard Collaborate worked very well for classroom settings with probably less than 50 or so participants including the teacher. This allows for as many people to be seen, heard, or able to participate in the chat without being drowned out by hundreds of messages. It’s not great for a very interactive class, unless you are simply doing a question and answer situation, I’d recommend another platform.

Blackboard Collaborate Feature Ratings