Blackboard Collaborate vs. Panopto

Blackboard Collaborate is well suited for teaching and learning, especially online classes. When used with learning management, Collaborate allows for seamless sign-on between the users' course sites and the web conferencing platform. Collaborate is ideal for launching virtual discussions, lectures, office hours, and more. Users can easily upload files to display or share their desktop/specific applications, which is great for demonstrating course principles and meeting learning objectives. Collaborate is really good for breakout rooms, where users join or are assigned to small groups for discussions or team-based learning activities.

Incentivized

The more I used it, the more I appreciated its ease of use. If I ever ran into a situation that I felt might be a learning opportunity at some point in the future, I would simply log in, record a session, and only allow access if/when it was appropriate later. Since the more recent versions also work on mobile phones, there really wasn't a time when I couldn't record something to review or present later. During covid, teachers didn't have access to their normal equipment, and students weren't always able to get access to a robust recording setup to do their recordings. Some students actually did recordings of presentations in their cars, or in the stairwells. Portability is powerful. I think that we all run into situations where our presentation didn't go quite as well as we had intended. As Panopto grew, they focused more on allowing the user to control their content and perform some basic (I would argue more than basic) editing, which made actions like awkward pauses easy to "fix" as you could create smooth, blended transitions easily.

Incentivized

• The ability to host a number of people in a meeting and manage their participation via text and audio.
• The screen sharing features allows presenters to demonstrate procedures exactly as instructed on the screen. This also allows the presenter to permit others to share their screens if they need clarification of something or to share further ideas.
• The software gives you the freedom to use a whiteboard to draw/demonstrate concepts to students and other employees.

Incentivized

• It captures multiple streams simultaneous (video, desktop, audio only etc) and is pretty smart when it comes to working with imported PowerPoint Decks.
• The end product can easily be shared in multiple formats and it has pretty rich content editing abilities for doing basic post-production clean up.
• They have recently introduced an in-line quizzing feature which can integrate with your LMS's Gradebook.
• The Analytics feature is very strong - we can get student level analytics when we integrate/embed the videos into our LMS.

Incentivized

• Currently, the audio and video features are enabled separately from each other. You could end up in a situation where 6 people in a 12-person classroom have their cameras enabled and 6 different people have their microphones enabled. It would be ideal if one "Talk" button turned on that person's audio and video simultaneously.
• The number of active participants able to turn on their microphone or camera is still limited compared to other products on the market. Competing products allow dozens of participants to enable their audio and video during the entire session without having to switch back and forth as Blackboard Collaborate requires with larger sessions.
• Blackboard Collaborate still relies on Java to function. As such, it has to bundle a Java launcher application in order to open sessions. Similar products can function using HTML5 entirely within modern browsers.
• Desktop sharing is not visible on mobile apps although the chat, whiteboard, and audio is fully functional.

Incentivized

• Captions are always a problem for us. We would like to caption all our videos and currently, the automatic captioning is not very good.
• We would like integration with our VLE grade book to allow seamless submission and grading for students.

Incentivized

It is a tool that faculty likes to use. It has so much flexibility to allow students to see a class even if they happen to not be available in the classroom.

Incentivized

I feel that Blackboard Collaborate does a lot of things right. It’s great for educational purposes and may be better for some age levels than others. I feel that they may benefit from making features that distinguish the types of learning environments there are. Primary schools won’t be operating the same as high schools or universities and may need completely different options and features. As well as private schools and public schools. As they continue to improve and add more features the platform will be even better and more tailored to each of the end users.

Incentivized

Needs some work, but I'm sure improvements will come over time

Incentivized

The availability of the software is quite impressive. You can access it at any time that you want and from anywhere that you want, but that depends on how the software is set up by the University. There might be sudden outages due to not having enough space on your database, which we had that very issue happen recently here at our University. During that time, you could not access their blackboard at all until it was brought up online again.

Incentivized

The performance of the software is remarkable. The loading speed of the pages is more than satisfying, it all depends on the users internet package. So far, there wasn't any issue of Blackboard slowing down other software or systems when integrated with them

Incentivized

The support has been very good. We integrate Blackboard into our learning management system so everything is seamless for users. Most issues arise from the user's browser configuration, cookies, and other privacy settings, not from the tool itself. Collaborate is pretty reliable with strong audio and video quality. Support has been helpful when we've had the occasional quirk, again more likely due to a user-side challenge than the platform itself.

Incentivized

Panopto has been quick to answer any questions, but their rollouts and updates have caused issues where we felt a little blindsided by unexpected changes. Their development cycle is slow and often their promises for future updates have been extremely slow or never come.

Incentivized

I believe Blackboard Collaborate is a great app/platform, but like similar products; it should be used in tandem with alternatives. Blackboard Collaborate has features that I find in other apps/platforms, yet some are easier to learn and use. Such is the case with the feature to work in different groups, and switching between groups. Similarly, using the chat whilst sharing screen is a lot easier than with alternative platforms. I do believe it could benefit from certain features such as Miro's participation tracking software, when using the whiteboard app, and maybe some improvement to video/sound quality; yet Blackboard Collaborate is most definitely a useful platform for meetings, workshops, and classes.

Incentivized

Panopto has the best captioning features that I've seen for a video repository. This enables us to caption videos quickly and efficiently. It also has tags and chaptering which makes viewing videos easier. We can also link videos inside Panopto to outside entities without needing them to have a Panopto account. Panopto works best if you have a LOT of video content, but if you only have some or don't care about organization, SharePoint (or Microsoft Stream) might be a cheaper/more efficient option.

Incentivized

The reason for this rating is that the software is a pretty good tool that can be utilized for use in all of the Universities around the world. It has the capability to fulfill the needs of various different education systems. Although, there are slight improvements that are needed, therefore the rating is at 8.

Incentivized

• Our implementation has been gradual over the last 2 semesters. Students who have used it to access live academic support despite being unable to drive in for face to face sessions have been extremely happy. It is gradually boosting student morale for offsite students, who have long felt they were unable to access services that were paid through fees with their tuition.
• Multiple support services who have wanted to provide online support but were unsure how they could are more empowered to do so now. The current mood is "what else can we offer online through this, workshops, advising, live broadcast of student org meetings"?

Incentivized

• During the pandemic, Panopto allows our faculty to quickly stage up lectures that were normally delivered in person, and these recordings reached thousands of students who could not come to campus for class.
• Both faculty and student report high satisfaction with the flexibility and convenience of having Panopto video content available in a course to watch and rewatch for learner reinforcement.
• Panopto's adaptable media distribution reduced impact on student technology and internet speeds when they might not have access to broadband connections, allowing them to continue to access essential course materials.
• Speech to text capabilities. increase accessibility compliance of media content.
• Archiving training materials in Panopto allows faculty, staff, TAs, and students to easily find recordings for reference.

Incentivized