Class for Web (formerly Blackboard Collaborate)

Pros

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

Cons

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.

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Pros

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

Cons

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

Pros

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

Cons

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

Pros

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

Cons

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

Pros

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

Cons

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

Pros

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

Cons

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

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Pros

It allows for a variety of events such as meetings, virtual classrooms and conferences with larger audiences.

Cons

The table of contents in the module object does not have active links that allow students to seamlessly jump from one item to another. Students are required to use the forward and backward arrows to get to a section in the module. This situation wastes time and can be frustrating on a slow internet connection.

Pros

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

Cons

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

Pros

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.

Cons

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

Pros

What i like most with blackboard Collaborate is the video conferencing. Aside the the LMS feature, data storage and assessment feature, the video conferencing is already there. Students will be reminded of the schedule of class and when the teacher is already in the virtual classroom. Conferences can lso be recorded ang uploaded in BB.

Cons

I dont have anything against this software, i love how it can be easily manage by the teacher as well as the students.

Pros

Overall, the software was easy to use for the purposes of my courses that opted to use this.

Cons

I don't have any complaints about Blackboard.

Pros

As background information, this was used for online classes - so my experiences is limited and based only on that. With that said, though, I was pleased with my interactions with Blackboard Collaborate. Here are the pros:
- It has an Interactive Whiteboard feature that is quite helpful. Teachers can add their slide deck or presentation here. The students can then "interact" with the presentation using some nice features (type words, underline texts, even highlight).
- Similar to other programs, you can share your device's screen with the class or you can allow other students to share their screen if they need to show a presentation or something. This comes in very handy if used well.
- If you've never used Blackboard before, I think it's pretty easy to get the hang of. It's well organized and has a nice user interface.
- Without Blackboard, managing the workflow in an online class would be extremely difficult. However, Blackboard does a phenomenal job of allowing information, assignments, quizzes, etc. to be assigned and returned/collected in an organized fashion.
- If a student is unable to attend a live session, Blackboard includes a record option so they can go back and watch the lesson whenever possible. This can also be used for remediation and review.
- They have some nice little features that often go overlooked, like the quick response or thumbs up/thumbs down features. It's helpful when quickly checking for understanding.
- Breakout/small group feature.

Cons

Here are some concerns:
- While it works well with Chrome, this platform does not seem to work with Safari or Edge. (This could be user error, though.)
- This may be user error, too, but I found the audio to be a little off. It seems like they could do some updates here to help it sound a little more smooth and less choppy. Sometimes you don't always hear everything.
- Even though the record feature is awesome - it can be annoying because the video and the audio are sometimes off.
- I guess this could be based on the WiFi connectivity, but video quality is inconsistent.

Pros

The easy to use Bb Collaborate helps keep an online class alive. The recording options allows teachers to teach an online course, have the experience recorded, and then uploaded for later viewing for those students unable to attend live. For asynchronous classes, setting up individual meetings, or sessions for coaching students (especially for speech communication courses) is so helpful, easy to use, and very easy for students to simply click on a link to join the meeting. I feel it is a safer version than zoom, and the file-sharing, and screen-sharing options make it versatile and user-friendly for teaches and students alike. My favorite feature is the scheduling set-up: you can easily invite individuals or an entire class by sending the link to them via an email, and creating a time-frame for entering the meeting. The icons on the meeting page are also easy to navigate for first-time users (most of my students are using this for the first time) .

Cons

Some of the "how to" features when searching for help in using the application were not as clearly presented (there's a lot to navigate through on those help pages), but this is the only aspect of this teaching tool that I would re-visit. The rest of the software hasn't show to be difficult to use, in any way.

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Pros

I have used this a handful of times and it is good

Cons

I feel that it could be more user Friendly so People do not navigate to Teams Calls

Pros

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

Cons

The screen sharing could use some improvement

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Pros

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.

Cons

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

Pros

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.

Cons

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

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Pros

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

Cons

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

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Pros

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.

Cons

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.