Blackboard Learn Reviews

Pros

Blackboard is a great tool for communicating with students, distributing course materials, and recording student grades. The "one-stop shopping" approach makes it easy for professors to stay organized in each class, and it also makes it easy for students to stay organized. When used well, Blackboard allows you to do everything from communicating with students to uploading assignment sheets to sending class announcements.

As a writing professor, I especially appreciate the SafeAssign feature that checks student assignments for plagiarism. Once I started requiring my students to use SafeAssign, I found that plagiarism attempts dropped off significantly. (So did attempts to recycle papers from one course to another.) In addition, SafeAssign saves me a lot of leg work when students DO plagiarize -- it flags the suspect text as well as the source, so I don't have to hunt it down myself.

Cons

For me, Blackboard wasn't intuitive to learn. Even after 7 years of using it nearly ever day during the semester, I had some challenges making it do what I wanted it to do. I often spent far more time than I should have trying to customize things for my courses. But, as long as I stuck to the basic features -- which are also the ones I personally found most useful/beneficial -- Blackboard was a great tool for organizing my courses and keeping students on track.

Pros

I used Blackboard for almost 10 years, and it was a decent LMS for my needs. When Blackboard Collaborate came out, it was even better because it added a new layer of possibilities (I could have several webinar/conversations going, merge conversations, and/or present to different groups at one time). However, there were always bugs in the system, even though we updated constantly. The Blackboard app was also very limited.

Cons

Too many bugs and freezes; many of my students had issues with accessing links when they used different internet browsers. Good for a small school or business, but not larger ones.

Pros

Navigating between courses and links was easy and intuitive.

Cons

The interface was clunky and a little old school. It was jarring switching from a tab with very streamlined mechanics to Blackboard.

Pros

BlackBoard Learn is a reliable tool for basic communication, content collection, and assessments. There are convenience factors baked into its framework in the sense that instructors can readily copy and reuse materials from earlier semesters, but other capabilities have far surpassed the benefits of this complacency factor. Also, the price point of BlackBoard Learn is extremely compelling, and they have reliable customer support and service.

Cons

Doing anything on BlackBoard Learn requires significantly more clicks and testing than competing products. The design is clunky, and it directly contradicts the instructional delivery of faculty who know what else is out there, as well as the learning-design preferences of Gen-Z students.

Alternatives Considered

Sakai LMS, CANVAS, Moodle LMS and Schoology

Reasons for Switching to Blackboard Learn

I was not part of the committee that made the decision to continue with BlackBoard Learn, but I believe the continuation was justified because of its low-cost and the challenge of switching to a competing model. Upgrading the LMS is a bit like updating your operating system. You can kick the can down the road and keep your status quo in place, but when you eventually update, you gain new capabilities, efficiencies, securities, and collaborative synergies.

Pros

The softwares capacity to synchronize contacts and users information.

Cons

Near to perfect but it has little hitch when it comes to support.

Alternatives Considered

CANVAS

Reasons for Switching to Blackboard Learn

Canvas tend to favour learning institutions only.

Pros

I prefer Blackboard Learn over other software that I have used in the past and recent events. The simplicity of the system ensures that it is easy to use for all generations, teacher and student, and all of those in between.

Cons

Right now, I do not think there is anything I would change.

Alternatives Considered

CANVAS

Reasons for Choosing Blackboard Learn

Ability for users to understand the program.

Switched From

CANVAS

Reasons for Switching to Blackboard Learn

How easy Blackboard learn was to use compared to other softwares.

Pros

Very good organisation, great for teaching higher Ed or adults. Also for passing and storing general information about courses. Ncie that it can be completely customised.

Cons

Clunky, dense, hard to inegreate activities that are automatically marked and generate progress statistics. This needs to be improved.

Pros

It was wonderful to have a single platform where I could access all my assignments, alerts and notifications from various professors and administrators

Cons

I can't think of any features that Blackboard was missing or I would add. Perhaps any connectivity issues would be a negative, but that isn't something the software is responsible for.

Pros

it's easy to use and has some great features

Cons

it's hard to search for a specific thing like the title of a doc

Pros

I haven't had any complaints from students so far, courses have been going well.

Cons

There was a connection problem at first but it was sorted.

Pros

What I like the most about Blackboard Learn is the amazing and complete features it offers to its users.
I use this software for higher education (as a student) and it is very complete and reliable. I can track all my courses, appointments, works, grades, files and many more in the same place, which is perfect for me.
I also like the fact I can communicate with my teachers within this platform and the possibility to activate the email notifications for every course is a great add-up for this software.

Cons

What I like the least about this software is the User Interface (UI), as I consider the navigability could be better and the features could yet be more accessible and easier to use.
Other than that, I don't have any other "complaints" about Blackboard Learn.
I may mention that in the beginning of the pandemic, with the introduction of online classes, this software was a life-saver and my institution needed to contact the support team, who was very responsive and agile to solve all the issues at that time.

Pros

I know it extremely well, find it to be easy to operate, think its features are strong and easily accessible, and have had very few incidents with students being totally baffled by it. We switched to Canvas this year, and I rue the day the decision was made.

Cons

The GUI for our version of Blackboard was extremely dated (we did not use Ultra, which frankly seems like a Canvas clone). I would offer the following analogy... Blackboard : Canvas :: PowerPoint : Keynote (... and I'm a PC user). It's boxy, somewhat drab, and looks a bit 'late Geocities // Fark.com'-era.

EVEN STILL: I don't mind it - I'd rather have functionality than aesthetics, which is the tradeoff made with Canvas.

DEADLY SERIOUS NOTE HERE: The BB Gradebook has always been, continues to be, and seemingly will forever remain an enormous hassle. It is slow, tedious to adjust, difficult to manage, and user unfriendly.

Pros

I like that I can create quizzes, embed media, create a gradebook, select the language, etc.

Cons

BlackBoard learn can be limited in many ways. For example, you are very limited with modifying the look of the course sites. Also, with assessments, you can give partial credit is a students gets the answer partially correct on a fill-in-the-blank assessment. I also don't like how it organizes the grades the students can see.

Pros

Probably my favorite thing about this software is how you can link videos, external links, and also professors can create quizzes, assignments, and tests on the platform and select various settings for their individual assignment/assessment. I LOVE taking tests on here because they are straight forward.

Cons

They really need to add a "flag" feature to the tests that are made and administered through the program. There have been many times when I am taking a long multiple-choice test and am not sure of the answer but then remember it 20 questions later, but by that time I can't find the original question that I remembered the answer for. The organization of this information system is, however, trash. Navigating around the site between classes and tabs within each class is annoying and not very intuitive. The way the site is made reminds me of someone trying to make a sign with a lot of diverse information, but everything on the sign is 12pt time new roman font - there's little differentiation between different ideas and concepts.

Pros

What I like the most about Blackboard Learn is the easy navigation of looking up my college courses. I am able to see what is due for each class on the calendar. I also love that I can get notifications that something is graded especially if it is for an assignment or test that I am waiting to see my grade.

Cons

One thing I don’t like about Blackboard is that there are outages and glitches sometimes and there is no notification about when it will be fixed or if it is ever going to be fixed. Another thing is the interface can be confusing to some people and may take some time to get used to.

Pros

The greatest feature of this product is the ease of use with regards to its navigation. When we started using Blackboard LMS, I literally trained a large portion of our staff on the ins and outs of the software in less than 2 hours. This has made classroom organization the easiest it has been in decade. Our instructors can distribute class materials, assignments, and grades with a few clicks. It is absolutely amazing!

Cons

Installation can be both lengthy and problematic if you are moving from an incompatible LMS. While we were lucky, we still ran into bugs while making our transition. This was frustrating, but was luckily done during the summer, when attendance was at its lowest.

Pros

Feature Rich - lots of value added functionality
Love that there are break out rooms for each session
Clickable rubrics - awesome
Cons 345/100 characters minimum

Cons

Grading system is too granular. if you use this it makes it too easy for a few bad assignments to tank students grades and gives the instructor more work.
What do you have against independent content. I create videos using Camtasia and Movavi, but its often a fight get them placed where I'd like or even to get them to run in the first place.

Pros

I found this advantageous when I was in college as an undergraduate. It was great to track my course work and online assignments through this LMS. For its time it was adequate with the UI layout but to modern look and feel of websites and web application software in 2020 it would be outdated unless they revamped the display of everything.

Cons

It was just a bit clunky at times and occasionally a pain in the @$$ but it still got the job done. It might have been that my student user rights weren't fully configured and there was a lack of training from the university for students to use the tool and not on the fault of Blackboard Learn.

Pros

Simple in use, easy to explore. It didn't take too much time to get used to this product

Cons

Not enough functionality - no options for embedded videos, you can not insert links or audio files in the body of the learning module, only below.

Pros

I utilized this software on a user-end point while in college in the mid 2010s. My wife is using it now as a student in the late 2010s. Blackboard Learn opens a doorway into the world of academia like no other platform I have ever experienced. With it, you can enter a virtual learning center with as robust a set of resources as any prestigious university in the country. Blackboard Learn is an essential tool for creating an online environment where students can really learn akin to the classroom. I highly recommend it - both for professionals looking to impart their knowledge to a wider, more varied audience, and for scholars looking to broaden their horizons with academic leaders across all fields.

Cons

Very few cons about this platform except that, akin to Microsoft Excel, a lot of the features seem both difficult to find or too complex to effectively utilize. The user manual will likely be your closest ally with this software.

Pros

Instructors and Trainers can do almost anything they want with content in Learn. Pretty much the only limits are those imposed by your institution (cost, security, resources, effort).

Cons

We find the reporting (especially activity) less useful than it could be. I don't know if that's just a shortfall in design, or if it's a configuration problem in our implementation.

Pros

Blackboard Learn has an easy to use assessment management system that allows faculty to share documents with colleagues and administrators that allow for assessing both online, hybrid, and fully in-person courses for accreditation purposes.

Cons

Blackboard Learn has an easy to use customizable reports that are simple to generate and share with colleagues and administrators. However, I rarely use this feature but it might be good for administrators who assess faculty performance for promotion and tenure evaluations.

Pros

Blackboard Learn allowed me to create an online classroom for my students with ease and detail. It was easy to create weekly folders and announcements about assignments - and send individual reminders to all of the students so they stay on track - all while easily keeping track of grades.

Cons

For some instructors, it was difficult to get a hang of the details of the software. There are areas where it could be more user friendly for those who aren't as comfortable with trail and error software learning.

Pros

What I most appreciated about this software is that I could take a test and get my grade for it the same time I finished it, unless it was an essay format.

Cons

It seemed to me that this software was tricky to navigate. Not too easy on the eyes when I used it. There was a lot going on with it and it wasn't always intuitive. It seemed busy and tricky to navigate with a fair amount of down time for maintenance in the middle of the night. Which, is when college kids get their work done . . . .

Pros

Whenever the professors are knowledgeable of the software, they make use of all the features and organize the content of the course in an excellent manner. Blackboard's features allows the class (professor and fellow students) to be interconnected.

Cons

I have heard from elderly professors about the difficulty of adding material in BB. This is evident in the fact that sometimes the course documents and syllabi are mixed in different sections.