Blackboard Collaborate

I love the overall functionality of this software as you can post grades, assignments, video tutorials, and various educational-based resources. The ease of usage with this software is comfortable as it is easy to comprehend.

I honestly don't have any cons from usage associated with this product. The overall learning curve and navigation of this product are easy to comprehend.

In a time when classrooms look like our living rooms and bedrooms, a service like Blackboard Collaborate rises to the occasion and delivers that bedroom class experience like few others can. Not only does it allow instructors and students to “collaborate” via traditional video, audio, and screen-share methods (how many services do that now?), but it also comes with multiple rooms, a place to list course directives, and a place for students to leave messages, including assignments. As a provider of supplemental instructions (as in, I’m not the instructor but the support member), I could join in the conversation and offer advice in a place where students would read it and even respond. It’s like group text messaging, but better. If I could narrow this down to one “pro,” it’s that Blackboard Collaborate considers all the communication angles and makes them available to all who are assigned to use it.

Other than the convoluted way some features are put together, the biggest issue I had was with the occasional connection problem. On one notoriously hilarious day, the instructor asked me to share some information about the department I work for (a student service), then interrupted me halfway into my speech with, “Well, I guess that’s our answer.” It seemed like she was getting impatient. But the reality was that she couldn’t hear me, and she thought I’d left the class. And she was the only one. All the students and her dean could hear me just fine. Things like that happened every so often. Not exactly great. Definitely not consistent.

The web platform is intuitive and well organized, the menus are well positioned, I like that you can add multiple files, formats, Doc, pdf, YouTube links among others, in addition to its system to detect plagiarism.

What I don't like about blackboard is that the app for iPhone does not have all the tools that the web version has, this makes it not fully functional, there are apps from other learning platforms that have a more detailed app, another negative point is that it does not have an internal version for streaming video, it is totally uncomfortable since it gives you a link that is only compatible with safari and cannot be used in other browsers such as Google Chrome, in conclusion the app has to have a better adaptation to provide a good user experience.

I like that blackboard has every piece of information that I need in regards to my school assignments. Not having to go to the site and login is a plus when it comes to doing my task. I can also and question and get answers right away with this software.

I see that they have take the virtual assistant off of the blackboard. Many of us depended on this to help us when the school wasn't open. I am sure if you put Iven back on that we would use him he was such a help.