Blackboard Learn by Anthology vs. Tovuti LMS

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

Tovuti is really well suited for anything that involves instruction, whether that be to a class or to provide training to your company's staff. While the interactive content is wonderful and allows for many accommodations (visual and hearing impairments included), it is not always an easy task to create activities that work comfortably for individuals with mobility/dexterity disabilities.

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

• You can effortlessly set up logins and manage registered courses with Tovuti LMS.
• The interface is easy to use and can be easily linked with a variety of APIs.
• You can customize the learning module by adding or removing information.
• During virtual events, groups can be divided into multiple virtual teams and then return to the original group.

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

• I would love to see Tovuti LMS add privacy measures that would confine visibility by course to allow more external partner participation.
• While I appreciate the speed of response from the solution team, efficiency could be added by allowing quick video calls for identifying issues. It often takes a lot of effort to describe the issue, and it would be a quicker process to be able to show the problem.

Incentivized

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.

We have established the training department to extend our training capabilities into one central area. I have mentioned training production, internal and external sales staff. But the training department will surely delve into the HR area of new hire orientation, annual recertification processes, etc. We truly have just scratched the surface of this iceberg. Now that we have made the investment, we will surely continue with this product. I cannot see us moving to another product at all. We will definitely renew our subscription with Tovuti

Incentivized

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.

The in-platform authoring tool really isn't an authoring tool. It is a content management system/database that requires you to build each and every component of your course under another tab and remember and correctly string them together. You can't author anything directly into a Tovuti LMS course. Everything is its own separate 'thing.'

Incentivized

I have yet to have an outage on the availability. As far as I know, no trainee has run into it either. Excellent rating on that front

Incentivized

I have worked with so many software packages that are slow to load, take for ever for screen changes, etc. I do not have that issue here with Tovuti at all. I have yet to really do any reporting on it as we are fairly new with the package, but if it operates like the rest of the system, then I am going to assume that reporting will be no more difficult than the rest of the platform

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 pre-sales team was very helpful and responsive and then stopped responding to my mail as soon as I had signed the contract, not even a reply from the last couple of emails sent. The post-sale teams are engaged and quick to respond and really good. Unfortunately, I need to use them more than I should, and sometimes the reply is "we don't support that feature", but the support from the support team is excellent.

Incentivized

Hayden was awesome. He knows his product inside and out and was able to answer all my questions. I had a lot of questions. I was actually starting to build courses while I was going through the training so that when the next session on the schedule came up, I had even more questions about what I had done vs the way I maybe should have. In the end, I was doing my own hands-on while going through the training. Tovuti is that easy to use.

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

The implementation had extremely wonderful support from Tovuti in the form of a series of one-on-one meetings to hear the clients needs and intended usage and then to set up the platform to meet those needs while demonstrating how to use it.

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

I keep coming back to this, but the customization of Tovuti is fantastic. There is a bit of a learning curve, but if you dive in, there are wonderful tools to create engaging content. BizLibrary has a great existing library of courses, but that is not what we needed. The ability to create specific permission levels for users that overlap in unique ways due to the nature of workforce development makes Tovuti stand out for our needs. BizLibrary and Schoology just were not as flexible in this regard. And while Schoology has strong content creation features, it mainly serves educational organizations and is developed to suit their needs. Again, just not as flexible as we needed.

Incentivized

Scalability is great. We bought their first 'size' package and that covers 300 trainees. Transitioning to the next level is more a matter of accounting and payment. My take on it is that its just a matter of paying the higher level of subscription and its done

Incentivized

• 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

• Tovuti LMS is easy to use for our learners and they are retaining more information than our previous eLearning platform.
• Learners are coming to training class with a thorough understanding of their role and are more prepared than previously
• We've seen an increase in attendance of webinars since we are able to post them in the media library for employees to attend after they are life.

Incentivized