Blackboard Collaborate Review

My overall experience with Blackboard Collaborate is always amazing. My grades have improved so much with this and I have been so much more organized because it comes with a calendar and reminder of when assignments are due and I never miss an assignment.

Pros

A feature that I absolutely love about this software is the breakout rooms for group projects. I love that professors can break us into groups and it is not difficult to see in Blackboard. I love how easy it is to use this software. I also love that I get to see my professors feedback on any assignments that have been graded. I love seeing the exact percentage as well instead of it saying "B+". I absolutely love Blackboard!

Cons

One feature that I hope that this software improves is sharing the computer audio. It would be really helpful to get audio instead of text because I feel like it is easier to communicate faster and a lot more easier than text. Either way I highly recommend this software because It has helped me be more organized. There are no features that are difficult.

Classroom Video conferring

my overall experience of Blackboard Collaborate is good

Pros

As opposed to web casting and video conferencing software, Blackboard Collaborate has interrogations and features that are specifically designed for engagement with the learners/audience

Cons

I am a new user of the Blackboard Collaborate's license so far nothing to complain about. Although the budget for this product is more expensive than our previous option

Blackboard- Buyer Beware

Pros

This program is used for all of our training, mentoring, Advisor meetings, and round tables; as such, I appreciate the versatility of the program in my organization. Screensharing is easy to use, as are video and audio chats. Creating a test in Blackboard is a very cool feature I learned about recently and I’ve been trying it out to make tests for my mentors. Moderator tools, such as turning off chat, audio and video help prevent any possibility of cheating amongst Advisors. I really like the whiteboard feature as well, and myself and my mentors and team mates alike enjoy making silly messages or posting clip art from the internet.

Cons

Blackboard has crashed on me quite a bit, as it has on many others in my organization. Connections errors happen quite often. Sometimes, the collaborate file we download gets randomly corrupted and we have to figure that out on our own and re-download a fresh copy. There isn’t much troubleshooting on their website for the issues we face, and sometimes IT is as clueless as we are on how to fix it. The interface for Collaborate is severely outdated, and needs a fine tuneup. We were excited to learn of an iPhone application for Blackboard, and then we downloaded it and not only has it not been updated in years, it was extremely dated and lacked basic functionality like screen sharing, video, whiteboard and moderator tools.

Good Product, just pricy in comparison to others

We use blackboard for our e-learning webinars and are satisfied

Pros

Easy to use, worked everytime we used it

Cons

it cost much more than our other webinar software

Mostly reliable platform for online classes

Pleased with my experiences with Blackboard. It's incredible that you are able to take virtual classes with this platform.

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.