Blackboard Learn Reviews

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.

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.

My assignments and materials are organized in one place. As of the most recent update, it is now much easier to use than it used to be. Assigning assignments and adding details to classes has never been simpler. Now, it's much easier to use than it was before. The process of giving students feedback and organizing my responses is simple. It's also how I communicate with them. As a result, it's easy to refer back to them and remember what I said.

I also like that Blackboard integrates well with other apps. When it comes to presentations, I rely heavily on VoiceThread and Panopto. GoReact and Top Hat are also on my to-do list.

An update to the mobile app is still in order. There is a lot of work to be done on this project. On the web, the user experience was much better.

What I like most about the software is what is is *supposed* to do: serve as a total course management system.

Everything about Blackboard is clunky — at least as it is set up in our university. Operations that should be drag and drop require multiple clicks. Nearly every function in Blackboard is present in other generic software and works more efficiently. In addition, Blackboard (as set up in our school) forces templates onto teachers, Redoing the templates into usable form takes lots of clicks.

Here are two examples of the most egregious design errors.

1. The Bb gradebook. It vaguely resembles like Excel or Google sheets in how functions. But unlike spreadsheets where one can easily duplicate columns and reassign formulas, the Gradebook requires separate multiple-menu-click operations for every column creation, every grade entry and every grade change. We find little flexibility in creating grading formulas, compared to off-the-shelf spreadsheet programs. And the import-export functions of Bb gradesheets to generic spreadsheets is so clunky that it is unusable.

2. Course duplication. Bb allows the teacher to duplicate a course. Except it doesn't really work. If you try and duplicate the course you taught in the year 2020 for use in 2021, you find that Blackboard will duplicate the general template for all university courses without importing all of the eaacher's innovations.

I love that everything for all of my classes is accessible on Blackboard Learn in a single area. I have access to all of the resources, tests, and homework that my instructors have uploaded. the platform's user-friendliness. For instance, it can be effectively used by both the instructor and the students. You can see all of your selections on the bar to the left.

I can't think of anything about Blackboard Learn that I dislike, to be completely honest. It has been an excellent resource for online learning and classes. I may interact with my professor and fellow students, take part in debates, and access and watch my lectures.

The big scale design of the platform is ideal to have all your academic needs in one. Access to a combine calendar allowing for easy visualization of homeworks, projects and tasks. Easy view of currents classes and course materials. With the years of experience this platform is reliable and complete.

Even though the complexity is robust, sometimes it can be overwhelming for students and ease of access across the platform is not the best compared to other market competitors.

I like the advertisements they did in the past, everyone knew how expensive and famous it was.

They did not innovate, they both a lot of little competitors and lately they are selling them because that strategy has lost again more innovative platforms and cheaper.

The softwares capacity to synchronize contacts and users information.

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

Being still a student, I love the ease with which I can move within the interface and change courses because if you have several subjects, you can easily locate them and see the content very easily. Inside the software, you can see practically everything as if it were a classroom since you can hold virtual meetings, see your content/tasks to do, see your final grades, take your final exams, etc. It is a platform that stands out for its excellence in education since the page rarely crashes or presents some difficulties.

It may be difficult at first to navigate through the different menus/pages/courses because the platform does not give us that simply look the first time we see it, as unlike its competitors in the market, this one has a slightly less friendly view. But it is rescued if for example our school/university gives us within Blackboard a small tutorial on the essentials you should know about this software.
But honestly, I do not see many cons to Blackboard because it is a platform that gives us what we are looking for and that is why it is one of the top e-learning software.

I like the powerful features and security of the program

BB is the most frustrating program I have ever used. It was one of the 1st LMS programs-I have heard. Its design is clunky and seems to be created by someone with little UXUI experience, I mean UXUI was a field that was known only by the people in the top of their field 20+ years ago so that would make sense! The lack of logical design for buttons and search areas is aggravating. The lack of them going back and changing things for the better and getting a visual designer and UXUI person involved NOW to fix the program-is again aggravating. An example to add a user, you click on a menu item-it goes to a window on the right and there is a search field there which one is supposed to ignore and know somehow to click on a button that does not look like a button called "Find Users To Enroll". WHY, is the search field even showing? Do you know how many times if I get away form using BB for a few weeks or months I end up typing in that filed instead of a button that does not look like a button? Explaining to faculty to NOT type in the field is a constant, because your intuition thinks the design makes sense-it does not.

Navigating between courses and links was easy and intuitive.

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

I found that Blackboard Learn is much easier to use than other online platforms used in higher education. Being able to easily add materials and instructional documents to an online course is critical especially when a department adopts a new edition of a textbook. The quiz/test builder within Blackboard Learn is also quite user friendly and being able to export exams from a previous course and import to a future course is a real time saver!

The discussion board when entering grades can sometimes be a little confusing, trying to determine if the student is replying to a classmate’s post – especially if the student has not included the classmate’s name in their reply, but that’s really more due to a student not following instructions and not the program.

There is nothing this software does that other software doesn't do better. I like that it allows for the creation of rubrics, as all programs of this sort do. Really can't seen anything about this that is better or even as good as other programs

Whole passages of feedback will suddenly disappear if you move the mouse into the wrong area or scroll a bit while you are typing comments on the essay. This is a persistent problem that everyone in our school has verified. In order to use one editing tool (a highlighter), the program locks out the other editing tool (the comment field), unless you refresh the screen, which then erases any comments not held in place by a highlight. I could go on and on and on, but I'm afraid I'd have to type it all over again if this review field is made by the same people who made Blackboard's essay editor.

I love the ability to reach all of my students or any subgroup in multiple ways. For example, personalized announcement, group emails, meeting and grading in realtime, scheduling office hours, and getting notifications are just a few of the native services, and each can be customized l.

The law of unintended consequences applies directly to blackboard. The same convenient and varied options that make the product great also give students more access (and wildly unrealistic expectations) to their professors. This is great for the 5% of students who have helpful and legitimate questions, but obnoxious for those who expect instant responses, midnight submissions, and A grades for D papers because “they clearly are trying. Just look at their blackboard logs and see!”

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.

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.

It is web-based. Some modules can be dragged and dropped. It has a lot of useless features I don't ever need or use, while missing ones that I do need.

Let's be real. Blackboard never heard of "less is more." They could learn a lesson from likes of Uber.

Here's what students need:

1. Educational content

2. Tasks with Due Dates and eventually grades

3. Chat (Group and Private)

4. Notifications

If a millennial designed Blackboard, the entire application could fit into a 3 page app, simple enough for a retard.

They went out of their way to make it complicated, so it would seem better on paper. They've put so many bells and whistles that it is an absolute nightmare for both students and professors alike. Confuses everyone and is a bottleneck in our educational system we should be doing without.

As a instructor blackboard lets me integrate a lot of different types of media through Kaltura, structure time released content ,vary assessments, and deliver individualized learning opportunities. All of these elements are crucial to my instruction. As a student, I get mobile access and notifications about grades, announcements, and course changes that help me manage my learning.

While the features are wonderful, they are somewhat convoluted to properly utilize, requiring more steps than I would like, and can sometimes be "hidden" in such ways that I have to refer back to user guides because it's not a very intuitive integration. Therefore, as a student, I find many of my professors do not fully take advantage of the learning management system because they have limited knowledge.

Blackboard has been AMAZING for organizing my online classes. I take 4 online classes a semester and I would be a mess if I didn't have blackboard reminding me of what needs done and making it super easy. Its very easy to upload my assignments and see whats due when it's due. Everything about it is SUPER easy and organized so I can focus all my energy on my school work.

I still can't figure out how to export my due dates to my calendar. I'm not sure if you even can, but I can't find any support on it. I don't like how I can't change the names of my courses and Ive had 3 courses that I dont take anymore still showing up and can't get them to disappear.

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

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.

Ability to share lecture recordings and instructional material.

The changes are in the wrong direction. Only 1 discussion folder. Moving from ability for instructors to customise the look and feel of a course to more standardization.

I like that I can add content, links, video's that can be played right from Blackboard. Each year this system gets better and more versatile to use. It also does not require much training to lean how to use it which make it user friendly on both sides. I also like that I can pull it up on my my phone even if the fromat is not always right.

It can be hard to find certain things and often tabs are hidden withing other tabs. This an also be frustrating to students when trying to locate content. The mobile app does also have some kinks, it does not format well. It is nice to check things like grades but not alot of work can be done from the mobile app.

What I like most about blackboard is the item analyzer which help us educator to secure that test and assessment given to students are align with intended learning outcome an. I also like the respondus that secure honest and credible exams.

There is also no enough storage. Every upload of documents or videos occupy a huge amount of BB storage, thus we need to procure additional storage.

Blackboard LMS is great for schools as well as faculty in organizing their class materials although it can be a bit confusing for your average user.

Price and the fact it was hard to implement.

It's reliable. Rarely needed tech support. It's pretty easy to use most of the time. It meets the complex compliance and integration requirements of higher education.

Lack of customizability. Course templates were generic with little flexibility for how it appears. Also with so many versions and always changing things around, it can be frustrating because you're used to a different version. If you're not in an industry with a lot of compliance regulations (privacy, accreditation etc.) I'd stay away and use something lighter and more flexible.

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).

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.

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.

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.