Class for Web (formerly Blackboard Collaborate)

Avantages

I love that one can teach, create and manage sessions, get grades and have online training and seminars.

Inconvénients

I don't like that sometimes the number of people who can attend an online session is limited (it was 250 personnel) and that it crashes.

Avantages

The integration of Blackboard Collaborate with the Blackboard LMS makes it very easy to conduct video chat sessions with course participants for the sake of online lecturing, tutorial sessions, or office hours. Collaborate has more or less all the features available in dedicated video conferencing tools such as Zoom or MS Teams with the ease and flexibility of using it from within the Blackboard LMS.

Inconvénients

Some performance lagging in voice has been experienced on slow network connections. The number of participants is not the cause of this but probably the media tuning algorithms to smooth the lags cause by intermittent Internet connections.

Avantages

The clarity of the data and expisure level .

Inconvénients

It was a little tricky to navigate around.

Avantages

The ability to have class discussions via a discussion board forum.

Inconvénients

The software was not advanced. Very hard to format posts.

Avantages

Black board was one of the first web based learning for me. It was very basic and straight forward.

Inconvénients

Blackboard was not as comprehensive as canvas. The collaboration was lacking and how assignments were submitted caused confusion at times

Avantages

Blackboard Collaborate is an easy to use tool.
The capabilities of Blackboard Collaborate are superb.
It makes work easier for us.

Inconvénients

I do not dislike Blackboard Collaborate at all.
Blackboard Collaborate has great features.

Avantages

Going and forth between assignments was seamless, grading was quick and easy, easy to comment on classmates’ blog posts

Inconvénients

I wish Blackboard would save your work more accurately. It doesn’t always save

Avantages

I utilized Blackboard for school. It is a great resource for online learning as it is easy for professors to post assignments and information. It is also a great tool to collaboratively work with your peers. I was utilizing Blackboard at the peak of COVID when everything shut down. Blackboard allowed me to continue my education and still obtain the necessary information to succeed in my academic journey.

Inconvénients

Blackboard is a bit more confusing to utilize than Canvas. It does take some getting used to however, the more you log on and explore, the easier it gets.

Avantages

I like the fact that it makes things much easier you can attend a class, or give a class anytime any place.

Inconvénients

Nothing much other than the fact that it is very expensive.

Avantages

The software is a more complete and efficient way to connect with students than Zoom.

Inconvénients

Like much of Blackboard, it can be cumbersome. Once that is figured out it is an effective tool.

Avantages

I can easily log into my account and see all courses that I got. Also, nice interface make this software special because I use it daily. I can download or upload materials without any problems.

Inconvénients

I am actually using it in education purpose only and I have not faced with any problems yet.

Avantages

Blackboard has a pretty 'easy to understand and use' design for end users. I was a pretty big fan of little to no handholding required.

Inconvénients

When things go wrong in Blackboard due to API or active directory sync, there is no way for you to tell that is what happened. You have to follow a trail of breadcrumbs to hopefully resolve the issue in a timely manner for your user.

Avantages

I can share documents or websites with workshop participants and simultaneously chat with them for added instruction.

Inconvénients

It times out rather quickly which means logging in again.

Avantages

I used Blackboard Collaborate for several years in graduate school. What I liked most about this software was the simplicity of utilizing the conversation threads. There was nothing too "fancy" and the layout provided simple 'reply' and 'reply all' buttons. Each week we were required to answer questions about a scenario, and reply to other students' remarks as well. It was easy to see which posts did not have replies yet so that we each student got a change to have a reply. I think if this information wasn't provided on the main screen many posts would be overlooked, and I liked that the layout was clear on who posted and who replied, especially when professors emphasized replying to posts that had fewer or no replies already. I also liked that there was a messaging system built in, so we could communicate with our fellow students and professor within the website while working on assignments.

Inconvénients

What I liked least about Blackboard Collaborate was that if I wanted to message my entire class, I would have to individually click every student's name, and then click the "To" button in order to add them as recipients. It was honestly time consuming and extremely frustrating as a graduate student because it wasted so many minutes every time, especially because I would often forget to actually click "To" after I manually clicked a student's name, so I wouldn't realize they weren't added into the message and would have to start over. This was unfriendly for users, especially for graduate students who need to focus on their assignments and communicating to their peers rather than trying to remember if they did the two-step clicking process for every single student rather than having a simple "select all" option! I don't know why there was no select all option to add the entire class when this is a platform universities often use for online classes and assignments. One more thing I did not like about Blackboard was that the layout was a bit confusing and not user friendly. It took me a while to get used to the flow of the website which felt unorganized and a bit scattered. I could see this being more of a problem for older graduate students who aren't used to adapting to various website layouts with many links to each class and each assignment stacked upon each other in an overwhelming way.

Avantages

As a student the software is easy to use and has an easy to use dashboard. It is nice to be able to email other students or teachers, especially when you get to the university level. I like how there are different options to view your grades and when you submit your assignments there is a confirmation code that is generated. There is also a variety of tools besides email in which communication can take place, like discussion boards, videos, or links to other websites. I also found it handy to keep track of important announcements from campus organizations and professors. As an Administrator I like how the software can keep me organized and track the progress of the students.

Inconvénients

I did not have many issues as a student, but as an administrator I found a few places with room for improvement. At times it was difficult to upload assignments, I would always get an error message. I know I am completing the correct steps because I have uploaded many assignments. Another issue I had was that this software always seemed to go down at the most in opportune times, like right before finals and then an extension had to be given to the students to be fair. I can't say if it was the fault of the school or the software, all I know is it is frustrating.

Avantages

Blackboard has been around for a long time and they certainly have a handle on online educational resources. I used Blackbaord as a student and then as an educator. Customization of courses and assignments is clean looking. There are a few different way to organize lessons, modules and the like to fit your teaching and training preferences, or virtual conferences. Assessing assignments and the built-in grading is a really fluid and offers a few different modes for categorizing activities. I usually use weighted system with some extra credit and compared to other platforms I've used like D2L or Canvas, Blackboard is much easier to work with. I Personally prefer Canvas, but Blackboard is really solid.

*My institution recently switched from Blackboard to D2L.

Inconvénients

Blackboard comes with themes and font styles, but the over all look is kinda of boring, despite the various backgrounds it offers.
Blackboard also offers some embedded applications like Wikis, and other educational resources from publishers like Pearson, and while most of them seem to function, I've had many issues with these connected resources being broken.
Hyper links seemed to constantly break in my announcements after some time, this could be me or an issue with one of my student's browser though, but I thought I'd put it here for people new to this software.

Avantages

It's somewhat intuitive, and if you use it with Blackboard it integrates marvelously. The recording process is easy and it uploads automatically, a breeze.

Inconvénients

It uses a ton of resources and it doesn't play well with computers with low RAM or bad internet connection, which makes collaboration difficult.

Avantages

This made class tracking and professor collaboration a breeze all through my undergraduate and beyond.

Inconvénients

The screen sharing could use some improvement

Avantages

Blackboard is sufficient when it comes to completing assignments, taking exams and posting on discussion forms. It is simple to see what your grade is in the class and what assignments you have to complete.

Inconvénients

The user experience of this software is subpar. The main course page of the website needs to be redesigned. The design of the page is bland and there is a lot of unused space on the website. The text box that students use on Blackboard is terrible. The autocorrect of the text box is unable to recognize a lot of words and claims that it is not a real word and gives a red line underneath. There are also multiple times where pressing the spacebar does not work and you have to click out of the box and click back in in order for it to work again.

Avantages

It is a secure and safe video conferencing application, which makes learning in a virtual environment easy and accessible. I find the whiteboard option that gives all users the opportunity to write simultaneously particularly useful for groups to share and collaborate. I also like chat feature with the ability to speak publicly and privately. It has bridged the gap between the physical and virtual classroom allowing students to learn remotely and be able to review lesson which was not possible in a physical environment.

Inconvénients

The problem I had with this software was sometimes i had an issue connecting my microphone and camera.
It's user interface could be improved, making tasks such as playing videos and sharing images easier as it takes a long period to upload content on the platform

Avantages

I used this platform while in college. All of our classes were accessible in one place and we had access to teachers/classmates at all times. Could ask questions and get immediate responses. Could submit papers/assignments so you never had to worry about your dog eating it (😁). Calendar kept you organized on due dates and class material. Grades on classwork/tests were easily accessible at all times.

Inconvénients

From a student perspective it was a great program. There were only a couple of things that I found difficult but I think it had more to do with the teacher who set up the class on Blackboard. Some material was hard to find. Too many options to put assignments. They should all go in one place. Didn't like the fact that I had to open up 5 folders to find reading assignment or questions to be answered. Discussion board could get overwhelming and looked very disorganized

Avantages

I like that Blackboard can contain and store so many things - Zoom links and previous video recordings, slides/presentations, PDFs of complete textbooks, and more. It makes online learning as a graduate student easy, and I don't have to use my limited free Google storage to access a variety of resources that my professors provide me.

Inconvénients

Sometimes it feels clumsily organized. This may be my university's fault, but it can be hard to find links, or I have to click through 4 levels of links to get to my destination. I'm sure site organization is managed by the admin users, but sometimes it just feels like there are too many options, half of which don't even have anything within.

Avantages

Great platform for student/instructors to have all the information necessary in one place. Many features to allow seamless learning experience for students.

Inconvénients

Sometimes screensharing will throttle speeds it seems and sometimes audio is not clear.

Avantages

This software allows us to share lecture slides and online recordings with large groups of students. We used this pre-pandemic but it has become even more important in the current climate. Relatively easy to use for providing learning materials and tracking assessments.

Inconvénients

The software doesn't have a function to see whether an individual student has downloaded or accessed a certain material, this would be useful. The interface and overall look could also be improved.

Avantages

I like the ease and setup of the course in blackboard. The layout is super-friendly in terms of finding your course materials, your email, instructor information, or accessing discussion boards. As a student in different schools, I found blackboard worked pretty much the same way, no issues in attending my live class sessions or taking my tests.

Inconvénients

No cons regarding blackboard from a student's stance. It is really laid out where anyone can log in and find their way around after a brief tutorial.