What Is Your Overall Impression of the LMS?

L21 Vendor Demo Survey Feedback

Note: Same responses are listed once with number of submissions in parentheses.

What is your overall impression of the LMS?

Blackboard Learn (n=21)

· Great improvement (4), addresses frustrations with current version.

· More intuitive

· More robust, a lot of functionalities if faculty take the time to learn and invest; upgrades look good; extremely broad functions.

· Less clunky

· Getting better, will work for Geisel.

· Cumbersome and not a big improvement over current version.

· Really like new features, especially mobile; if we aggressively promote mobile it would be good to tweak the authentication process.

· Going in the right direction. Things are solid. Generally good. Very capable and has many options I never knew existed.

· Plethora of tools available, but the interface is not user friendly.

· Has all the features, but not well integrated into our faculty day-to-day.

· Seemed a little clunky

· Presenter was too amped up. Presentation was slightly disorganized, not Dartmouth-specific.

Canvas by Instructure (n=26)

· Awesome product, looks impressive, fresh look, great, very positive

· User friendly (5), easy to use, seamless and simple

· Powerful set of features, by far the best presentation of the three, not corporate

· Good product, lacking some features

· Open and accessible, collaborative

· Great UI, seamless, navigation clean and simple, good structure, very well organized , well laid out and features very usable, modern and well designed

· Professional layout and design

· Very robust and complete LMS, but there will be a fairly steep learning curve for faculty.

· Very nice organization and interface for laptop, not so much for iPad.

· Lots of flexibility (3)

· Very impressed; this is what the LMS of 2013 should look like; design is well thought out and the features very usable.

· Good, looks like it would do what I need. Really like it – my favorite.

· Responsive to input and feedback.

· Fresh, new approach, students already using similar interfaces and can be "at home."

· New and shining

· Best presentation of product capabilities, nice features

· HTML (inline) editor (2), gradebook (2)

· Not sure if I could map Bb into it; seems like there are similar feature sets.

· Makes it easy to create their course, a lot is automated, drag and drop, responding to work – via rubric, video, inline editing

Overall impression (continued)

Desire2Learn (n=14)

· Clean (3), intuitive interface (4)

· Positive, different, interesting, nice

· Like it, forward thinking, innovative

· Good organization of product, well thought out

· Easy to use, more user friendly

· Seems like an effective product for helping instructors build a learning experience, but there seems to be many features /functionality that are in progress still.

· Calendar and rubric seem better to use and look at.

· Portfolio (3), students have control, can share

· Not very impressed, design isn't great

· Not that different from Blackboard (3), not many new/useful features that set it apart

In your view, what are the strengths of the LMS? Which attributes or features stand out?

Blackboard Learn

Product

· Familiarity (3). The benefit of longevity and a proven track record, know the product and interface. We understand it fairly well, no big cost in time staying with Bb. Mature product.

· Feature-rich, tools (8), variety, choices

· Considerable improvement over current version; very impressed with capabilities, better if Dartmouth adopted a cloud instance.

Interface/Navigation

· Adaptive release screens and interfaces have not changed, many clicks are not different.

· Organization of home page is more flexible (2), access to content.

· Interface is reasonably flexible for presenting information in different ways and can be modified by students.

Content

· Being able to edit content without downloading

· Import/export features

· Ability to view past versions of content (2)

· Math editor

· Video embedding, YouTube

· Content management (3)

· File sharing (2)

Calendar (3)

· Export to students' personal calendars

Grading

· Ability to attach and measure learning goals

· Better grading system (2)

Collaboration

· Social media integration

· Community features

· New Facebook-like interface

Has mobile apps and interfaces (2)

My Bb

· Interface

· Impressive

Other

· Free alumni accounts

· Faculty help site, webinars, tutorials

· Ties to publishers

· Seem motivated to respond to weak points

Strengths (continued)

Canvas by Instructure

Product

· Platform (3), continuous updates

· Focus on mapping business requirements to the solution, on the roles of the users

· Really focusing on features that matter – that people really use

· Spectrum of functionality, feature rich

Interface (4)

· Design (3) well thought out, makes sense, clean, not cluttered

· Usable (3)

· Agile, customizable (2), incredible features

Navigation

· Drag and drop files (6)

· Hyperlinks in syllabus (2)

· Built in view without leaving home page

· Clean and simple

· To do list – don't need to drill down to get info

Content

· Media integration (3), video, access to lots of media from editor, YouTube

· MS docs integration and inline annotation (4)

· Content import (2), batch upload and downloads, flexible import from other systems

· Text editor supports LaTeX and wysiwyg math, language platform

Interoperability

· Working toward Office365 integration

· No support for lock-down browser, but does integrate with Respondus, if student has it.

· Supports LTI, well known APIs, Googledocs, BigBlueButton videoconferencing, Banner

Calendar

· Auto update (4) on syllabus, assignment changes, populates iCal or Outlook (2)

· Auto-adjust dates term (4) helpful to faculty

· Supports groups (2)

· Easy to link assignments in the syllabus

· Positive (5) dynamic, looks great

Grading

· SpeedGrader (3) looks great, dynamic , iPad version

· Inline annotation/commenting on submitted assignments (2)

· Tab and arrow keys work in gradebook

· Log of changes to grade book – excellent

Collaboration

· Tools

· Discussions via email (2), can respond outside LMS, don't need to log in

· Groups (2) spaces, support

· Peer review of assignments managed easily

Mobile (2)

· Nice interface

Strengths (continued)

Analytics (2)

· Use analysis

· Used to provide feedback on how the system is being used across institutions

Other

· Handles sections

· Notifications (2)

· Save as you go

· Text block question in quizzes

· Rubric features and editor

· Online conference

Desire2Learn

Interface

· Students have the ability to shape their space

· Course Builder

· Tools look good, far superior to Bb

Navigation

· Easier for faculty to navigate

· Drag and drop (2), linked for ease of use

Content

· View and edit Office docs in browser

· Video note (3) and insert stuff almost anywhere

· Comprehensive content delivery options

· Unicode, Math ML and LaTeX

· Export items in a format that can be opened without D2L

Grading

· Highly flexible grading abilities, tools

· Progress reporting (2) useful, extensive and easy to use

· Less clunky

· Able to annotate

· Grade mechanism set up so students can better understand where they went wrong

· Compatibility with Excel

· Options for summaries for class or students

Collaboration

· Flexible discussion board

· Supports TA and co-instructor collaboration

· Supports student groups

· Online chat for office hours

Strengths, continued

Mobile

· Mobile app for content annotation, grading

· Positive, good presence

· Native apps (2), appropriate use

· Good for DMS

Portfolio

· Robust, a plus, feature rich

· persists after graduation (2)

· Can control who sees it

Calendar

· Agenda view

· ICS integration

· Strong tie to calendar

Other

· Browser lockdown (2)

· Advising feature

· Release conditions (2)

Please tell us about any weaknesses that you observed in the LMS

Blackboard Learn

Complexity

· Too many features

· A lot of what people find "missing" is actually there, just don't know it or where they are in SPs that haven't been implemented.

· Extremely broad functions

· Strength (many features and options) is also a problem because there are too many choices when trying to design a site.

· Lack the expertise to know the subtleties, e.g. blog, wiki, journal

· Company is focused on features and not as much on production support and coming up with solutions to integrate client workflow.

Interface

· Home page still looks like old Bb and students may roll their eyes at "change" if faculty doesn't use it any differently.

· Navigation is still improbable, not always clear

· Drag and drop still not fully implemented

· Not intuitive and features are hard to set up

· Clunky interface, slow response times – can take forever to try to figure out how to do something

· Even the people demoing Bb have problems with it

· Nobody likes Bb

Calendar

· Calendaring only for assignments

· No dates on non-graded tasks, e.g. readings

Content

· Tagging by topic

· Searchable by student

Other

· Would like a subscribe option for blogs, wikis, journal postings

· Goals and objectives must be imported by administrators

Weaknesses (continued)

Canvas by Instructure

Interface

· Overall course structure is fixed so this will require rethinking from Bb options

· Home page seems cluttered though this is customizable

· Visual organization of pages isn't great, cluttered

Mobile

· iPad can't be used to author content or build sites, mostly used for reading content, grading student work, or participating in discussions, lacks offline storage

· Android app is very new and much more limited but they are working toward mobile parity

· Can't annotate assignments on mobile

· Seems weak, main app not mobile friendly

· Functionality on IOS seems good, but can be improved

Blog

· Outside (2), seems messy, too clunky to be useful or worth getting over the barriers for short courses.

· Not integrated for grading but seems to have good workaround

Collaboration

· Discussion board (2), might not be used the way we commonly use it

· Plug ins, GoogleDocs for collaboration

· No chat functions yet (2); students want that feedback

· Unsure how easy it would be to share content across courses, by department

Interoperability

· Integration with 360

· Doesn't support SCORM standard

· Not as useful with external programs like Adobe Captivate

Other

· Browser lockdown not native (3)

· Who's online

· Aspects of adaptive release on assignments are very clumsy if concept-to-concept mastery is desired.

· No free retention of alumni content

· We will need to work to make the change and work around the "missing" features.

· More information about portfolio needed (3)

Weaknesses (continued)

Desire2Learn

Overall

· Lack of anything very inspiring

· Lacks depth of BB

· Many options; may take a while to complete a task

· Do not see any features that would make me want to switch from BB; invested great deal of learning time, perhaps could be convinced after playing with it

· Real benefits to students, but not sufficiently different from BB to warrant a change

· Recent 3-day outage?

Collaboration

· Blog seemed clunky and complicated.

· Lacks feature of collaborating across all schools.

· No built in wiki tool

Other

· 2GB storage allotment may be too small for portfolio

· Adopting D2L will require a significant training investment

Note: Presentation dates
Blackboard Learn 1/29/2013

Desire2Learn 2/4/2015

Canvas by Instructure 2/5/2013

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