Blackboard is a students portal used by many universities, It is a central dashboard where students can access area of relevance such as module information, their timetable and submit and receive feedback on assessments.
I found an Article that critically reviews the Pros and Cons of blackboard in a high level of detail. These were quoted from “Trust Radius’s” website which is a well known service provider designed for reviewing business software.
Blackboard Pros
- Gradebook management. Although it seems many instructors do not use the advanced features of the grade book, it does a good job of organising and tracking assignments created within the LMS and those that exist outside (but must be accounted for in the grading scheme).
- Document management. Covers all the basics of making resources available for students to access. Submitting documents tends to work well, although sometimes the interface experiences difficulty with larger files.
- Student communications. Email especially (of course), but the Announcements feature is also used quite often to good effect. The scheduling of announcements is a handy feature.
- Course modules. Not a particularly popular feature, but the ability to setup modules within a course helps to keep things better organised for students to experience. Rather than dumping materials into many folders, the modules system helps guide students through the content as the instructor intends for them to do.
- Overall interface design and layout. Other LMSs (such as Canvas) have a much more modern, evolved, and intuitive interface. The UI of Blackboard seems to be a patchwork of feature areas without a consistent experience throughout. In particular, instructors have a different view of many areas (e.g., the grade book and assignment uploads) than do the students, which causes some confusion.
- Feature creep. Granted, a value point of Blackboard are the plethora of features available, but most instructors in my experience (including myself) seldom go beyond the basics. There seems to be just too many “buttons and levers” presented to the users all at once — like a power plant control room.
- Feature latency with other providers. Again, it seems Blackboard is slow to evolve in keeping up with the refinements of other LMSs. This doesn’t mean more features, but improving the core competencies that make for an LMS that should be a pleasure to use. Colleagues at other institutions talk about features in their LMSs that Blackboard either does not yet have or did a hurried job of implementing.
- Learning curve. Beyond the basics, the learning curve of Blackboard can be quite steep, especially for users who have some hesitancy with learning new technologies. Even for savvy users, the curve can be daunting when digging into some of the advanced features.
What can be improved
Aspects that i personally think could be improved start with an easier to use user interface as this would make students more likely to use the website and App. The use of a collaborative shared space system similar to google drive as blackboard has tried to accomplish this but to limited effect. Google drive online storage space is extremely useful for students carrying out creative courses as a-lot of files that have large file sizes so online cloud storage becomes useful, Google drives other feature which is its option to share work with other people in real time is a feature that comes in handy for group work. Finally the option to tweak colour themes to suit the user personal preference similar to a better Ui, having the option to tweak colour schemes will persuade students to use the service more if they feel that its personal to themselves.
How i’m going to use the data to further research and design (inform my own work)
The use of Dashboard is important to me as a i find the idea of having a page where all information can be accessed is a useful feature in relation to Ui design. Ui design is very important as one of the main selling points that my project prides itself on is its intuitive and simplistic design.
Sources:
https://blackboard.lincoln.ac.uk/webapps/portal/execute/tabs/tabAction?tab_tab_group_id=_38_1
https://www.trustradius.com/reviews/blackboard-2014-02-18-10-45-37
