Blackboard Learn by Anthology vs. LMS365

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.

Incentivized

For smaller businesses who only need a basic LMS, already use SharePoint, Entra ID, and Microsoft products, and are going to use Articulate 360 to author eLearning courses, LMS365 is a great solution as it's been used by many businesses for a long time. Unfortunately, if a lot of customization is required, it would require a lot of work to get going.

Incentivized

• Provides HTML quality course content that is easily retrievable and viewable.
• Provides multiple methods of communication: email, threaded discussions, real-time "live" online discussions, as well as grade portal.
• Allows facilitators multiple methods of grading or providing feedback: threaded discussions, rubric scoring, personal comments, inline viewer, or download/upload attachments.

Incentivized

• Creating an easy to navigate Course Catalog
• Enabling the training team to assign training easily and send out email reminders.
• Create sample training in the Sandbox to test thoughts and ideas.

Incentivized

• Although the current graphic user interface is easy to use, it can be improved with larger fonts, dynamic menus, and attractive graphics.
• The system does not include a module to pay the school fee.
• The roster tab lacks detailed information about students.

Incentivized

• We can create quick courses
• We can schedule the meetings with built in functionality
• We can keep all documents in sharepoint ECMS

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.

It is very simple for me: As I said, I am (we are) selling and consulting around SharePoint LMS. SharePoint LMS is a killer application which needs to be in every company which has a vision and mission to deliver and create knowledge. So you can say Thomas (me) is biased, but I only encourage you to check out the solution to hear what we have to say and stack our solution against the other solutions out there.

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.

Ultimately, in my opinion LMS365 is a bit clunky to use. It has most of the features you need, but most need to be configured by your technology department, e.g., SSO, user groups in Entra ID, notifications through Slack, teams, etc. If you're looking for an all-in-one solution, look elsewhere, as lms365 has several catches to its proposition.

Incentivized

Itʻs a good platform for certain things such as tests. Blackboard may not be the most user friendly but there is always room for improvement in any website, business, etc. When used with other platforms such as Google Classroom, Blackboard can be more effective, but when used by itself I feel it is not as impactful from a student perspective.

The few times we actually needed support generally were during major upgrades of the system and getting a quick handle on how the configuration changed were the primary reasons.

Incentivized

Blackboard's Managed Hosting was top-notch in getting us up and running quickly.

Incentivized

Blackboard is the all around better fit for our intuition. It provides the "bells and whistles" we require in having a diverse faculty and flexibility in course delivery. The "bells and whistles" aren't cheap, but we have found that budgeting for this large expense has been more than worth it for us.

Incentivized

Throughout my career I came across many different solutions for Knowledge and Collaboration and LMS systems. This includes Lotus Notes, Documentum, Live Link, LMS solutions from Oracle, ADP, another SharePoint based solution. Many years back, with the intro of Microsoft SharePoint, I was drawn to that product and solutions based on SharePoint. SharePoint is very powerful and in it current version, 2013, it is the without a doubt the most feature rich and broad solution platform out there. SharePoint LMS is in my eyes a killer application and if a company, institution or educational entity looks to create, expand, change up their training efforts for employees, customer, partners, students, SharePoint LMS is the tool to look at. If you have SharePoint already installed, it is a must look at, period. SharePoint LMS became the tool of choice, I recommended when I was a consultant, when I worked as a Director for Learning Management Systems at a local University. I am now part of a team which not only sells, but as well consults around SharePoint LMS.

• It has answered all my needs for distance learning and met most of the objectives
• The only negative I can think of is not having access to the past course material and not being able to download the lectures
• Another positive is the zoom integration feature

Incentivized

• Employees cannot work until they are Hippaa certified, LMS 365 makes it possible for us to expedite the process of certifying many employees at once.
• LMS 365 Does not easily support any training for software such as Excel or SharePoint despite the course catalog offering classes for these subjects.
• LMS 365 could stand user interface redesign if nothing else to update it to a more modern appearance

Incentivized