Likelihood to Recommend A school with a well-established technology imprint with their students (for example, ours is a BYOB school where every student has their own laptop and must bring it to school every day and where over 99% of our families have reliable broadband at home) is a reasonable scenario for using The arrogance and intransigence of the sales force is quite disconcerting… They are no longer the only game in town and don't yet realize it. Less well-off schools/families may find it a challenge if students must be on campus or at a public library in order to use the technology. Obviously, during the pandemic, this became problematic for some districts.
Read full review Pearson Revel is probably best suited for distance learning of large sections where there is little time for discussion and grading assignments manually is prohibitive. I would prefer not to use it with small classes and traditional classes.
Read full review Pros Blackboard Learn makes submitting assignments electronically simple and provides a variety of built-in Web-based tools like e-portfolios, wikis, and blogs that our students use to create their own content. Blackboard Learn is intuitive and easy to navigate from a students perspective Blackboard Learn has many integrations available for connecting this LMS to other tools we use at our institution. Read full review Ease of assigning reading Ease of tracking level of student engagement Ease of use for instructors Read full review Cons Blackboard Learn has some limitations when it comes to submissions It is not that user friendly, I had to spend some time to get a hang of it in the beginning I have been struggling a bit with deletion of manually added courses Meena B Information Technology Project Manager
Read full review Unfortunately, there are some videos that do not play, or situations where the video does not match the question content. These are bugs that should be attended to by Pearson, but although I have reported them (along with students), they have not been remedied. Instructors who would prefer to use only the digital text do not have the option to purchase the text without the platform. Because the text and software are integrated, there are no "page numbers" as in other digital texts which makes it hard to reference a particular section in a lecture, assignment, or presentation. Read full review Likelihood to Renew There are several aspects of
Desire2Learn that outweigh the benefits of using Blackboard. I find that the
Desire2Learn system is a bit more user friendly and looks more up-to-date. However, the decision to renew systems is not up to me because the entire University uses the same system. Regardless, I think I would choose
Desire2Learn over Blackboard because of its improved user interface.
Read full review Usability It is very usable for both faculty and students. The interface is pretty intuitive and most students can use it without a lot of additional training. Faculty do need some training to effectively use the interface, but they usually get it pretty quickly. We have had to create some additional programming to give faculty a way to delve deeper into the content.
Read full review Support Rating My Blackboard support comes from the university I work with. They are responsive--eventually... but it takes them sometimes a week to respond to a reported issue. For example, I reported 2 issues last week and one was resolved and I was contacted about one still open option today. That is too long for a tech issue. I have not contacted any support offered directly by Blackboard, which may be a completely different experience altogether.
Read full review Implementation Rating Blackboard's Managed Hosting was top-notch in getting us up and running quickly.
Read full review Alternatives Considered Coursera offers a variety of modules in which a team is able to work on then, but [Blackboard Learn] offers more options to understand how are the team members developing and which tasks have offered a harder challenger for them. [Blackboard Learn] also offers a variety of reports that can be generate by a team lead.
Read full review In my opinion,
McGraw-Hill Connect is by far much better than Pearson Revel. It has more functionality. I think the McGraw-Hill SmartBook is better than the Pearson Revel (which is merely a reading app). The SmartBook allows instructors customization and it helps students to master the materials better than just a reading app. In my experience, McGraw-Hill provides exception customer support. They always reply to my questions in a timely manner. I have used both Pearson Revel and
McGraw-Hill Connect and I will have to say that I will not be going back to use Pearson Revel.
Read full review Return on Investment At one of the institutions that I worked for, the ROI was excellent for the number of users we were serving; however, I could not speak to other instances as I was not aware of the overall cost of the contract. Read full review NEGATIVE: The platform is less expensive than a printed text, but students can use OER's for free. This is especially important at the community college level where students tend to have less financial resources for education. NEGATIVE: After the course completes, the student has nothing to use as a reference. They cannot go back and view the content, nor can they print any of the content. NEGATIVE: The student pays for the learning platform and content which includes a large number of activities and resources. While this seems to be a positive thing, students (and instructors) can get overwhelmed with the number of activities and resources available. Some students won't use any of the resources at all. Read full review ScreenShots Blackboard Learn by Anthology Screenshots