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Product Name Blackboard Learning System Vista 4.1 Enterprise License
Developer Name WebCT
URL Blackboard Academic Suite Vista
Review Date April 25, 2007
Forums Blackboard Learning System Vista 4.1 Enterprise License Discussions
Reviewer Jonathon Lunardi    email    bio
Communication Tools
Discussion Forum
  • A spell-checker is available for student and instructor responses.
Reviewer Comments
Discussion forums can be threaded, blog format or journals (individual or group). Discussion forums can be viewed by topic, by date, and by thread. Discussion threads are expandable and collapsible to view an entire conversation in one screen. Instructors can associate a discussion with any course content. Posts can contain URLs, file attachments and may contain HTML. The threaded discussion software includes a formatting text editor which can create mathematic equations. Discussion forums allow texts to be selected and compiled for downloading and printing. Discussion posts can be peer reviewed on a flat scale or using a two dimensional rubric-like grading form.

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Discussion Management
  • Posts may be peer reviewed by other students.
  • Instructors can view statistical summaries of discussions displaying participation which can be used to generate grades.
Reviewer Comments
Discussion topics can be made gradable and a grading interface provided. Grading can be assigned by grading form (rubric), numeric or alphanumeric grade. Instructors can limit discussions to specific time periods. Instructors can enable or disable anonymous posting, and determine whether student posts are re-editable. Discussions can be saved or printed for off-line reading. Instructors can restrict creation of new discussion threads or all new posts within any discussion topic. When instructors create group discussions or journals, they only create a topic once and then topics for every group or student are created with appropriate read and posting permissions.

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File Exchange
  • Students can submit assignments using drop boxes.
  • Administrators can define disk space limitations for each user.
Reviewer Comments
Students have a private folder into which they can upload and download files. Students may access their folders using WebDAV.

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Internal Email
  • Students can use the built-in email functionality to email individuals or groups.
  • Students can use a searchable address book.
  • Instructors can email the entire class at once at a single address or alias.
  • Students can elect to forward their mail to an external address.
Reviewer Comments
The internal email system supports archiving, searching and attachments. Students can spell check outgoing messages.

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Online Journal/Notes
  • Students can attach notes to any page.
  • Students can combine their notes with the course content to create a printable study guide.
Reviewer Comments
Journal discussion type provides a way for students to share notes and thoughts with the instructor and or other students. In journals that are not private other students may leave comments or rate journal posts using a flat scale or grading form (rubric)

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Real-time Chat
  • The chat tool supports unlimited simultaneous group discussions
  • Instructors may moderate chats and suspend students from the chat rooms.
  • The chat tool supports a structured way for students to ask questions and instructors to provide answers.
  • The system creates archive logs for all chat rooms.
Reviewer Comments
The system does not limit the number of simultaneous rooms. Students can see who else is online across the entire system and invite them to a chat room. That is combined with whiteboard tool, see whiteboard description for more information.

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Whiteboard
  • The whiteboard supports image and PowerPoint uploading.
  • The whiteboard supports mathematical symbols.
  • The software can archive a recording of whiteboard sessions for future viewing.
Reviewer Comments
Whiteboard usage can be moderated, and is combined with the chat tool (see chat description for more information).

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Productivity Tools
Bookmarks
  • Students can share their bookmarks.
  • Students can create bookmarks in a private folder.
  • Students can bookmark any content material in a course.


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Calendar/Progress Review
  • Instructors and students can post events in the online course calendar.
  • Instructors can post announcements to a course announcement page.
  • Students have a personal home page that lists all courses in which the student is enrolled, new email and all course and system-wide events from their personal calendar.
  • Students can view their grades on completed assignments, total points possible, course grade, and compare their grades against the class performance.
Reviewer Comments
Calendar entries can be linked to course materials and activities. Events can be repeating. Institutional calendar events and announcements can be added as well. When Intructors copy a course from a previous term they can update all of the dates in their course calendar in one step.

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Searching Within Course
  • Students can search all course content.
  • Students can search all discussion threads.
Reviewer Comments
Students can search all assignments, course content, discussion threads, and email messages in their course. Students can constrain a search using filters. Search of content includes the content of many common file formats such as HTML, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and PDF.

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Work Offline/Synchronize
  • Students can compile and download the content for an entire course into a format that can be printed or stored locally.
  • Instructors can publish course content on a CD-ROM that can be linked to dynamically from within the online course or viewed offline.
Reviewer Comments
Instructors may also publish podcasts or video lectures for download and offline playback.

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Orientation/Help
  • Students can access context sensitive help for any tool.
  • The system includes online tutorials for students that help students learn how to use the system.
Reviewer Comments
In addtion, Blackboard provides free orientation and training material for students and instructors that can be included in any courses. Additional training material may be licensed from Blackboard and customized by the institution.

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Student Involvement Tools
Groupwork
  • Instructors can assign students to groups.
  • The system can randomly create groups of a certain size or a set number of groups.
  • Students can self-select groups.
  • Each group can have its own discussion forum.
  • Each group can have its own chat or whiteboard.
  • Each group can be given group-specific assignments or activities.
  • Groups may be private or instructors can monitor groups.
Reviewer Comments
Instructors can selectively release any course content or activity to a group.

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Community Networking

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Student Portfolios
  • Students can create a personal home page in each course.
  • Students can use their personal home page to selectively display their course work.
  • Students can export their personal home page.
Reviewer Comments
Students are given a private folder for content by default. A personal profile tool is included in the product and empowers students to choose what information to share with classmates. The Blackboard Portfolio for CE and Vista is available at additional cost and provides additional features for creationg of a personal portfolio. See Blackboard website.

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Administration Tools
Authentication
  • The system can authenticate against an external LDAP server.
  • The system can authenticate using the Kerberos protocol.
  • The system supports Shibboleth.
  • The system supports the Central Authentication Service (CAS).
  • Administrators can set up fail-through authentication against a secondary source (e.g. the system's own database) in the event that the primary source (e.g. LDAP server ) fails.
  • The system can support multiple organizational units and virtual hosts within a server configuration.
Reviewer Comments
Blackboard supports both inbound and outbound authentications allowing rich interactions with external applications

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Course Authorization
  • The system supports restricting access based on roles and roles can also be customizedby the service provider.
  • Administrators can create an unlimited number of custom organizational units and roles with specific access privileges to course content and tools.
  • Administrators can distribute the permissions and roles across multiple institutions or departments hosted in the server environment.
  • Instructors or students may be assigned different roles in different courses.


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Registration Integration
  • Instructors can add students to their courses manually or allow students to self-register.
  • Administrators can transfer student information bidirectionally between the system and an SIS using IMS Enterprise Specification v1.1 XML files via web services.
  • The software is compliant with the IMS Enterprise Specification for Student Data.
Reviewer Comments
Vista supports real-time integration with multiple Student Information Systems allowing multiple institutions to run from one Vista installation

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Hosted Services
  • The product provider offers a hosted solution.
Reviewer Comments
The product provider offers a hosted system that includes service level agreements with guaranteed system availability, utilizes a network of high-performance, fault-tolerant servers, a secure facility with environmental control, redundant and conditioned power, a modern alarm/security system, 24x7x365 monitoring, a direct T3 connection with second redundant T3 connection, and daily offsite tape backups. Individuals can access course and system information from any computer that has a web browser and Internet connection.

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Course Delivery Tools
Test Types
  • Multiple choice
  • Multiple answer
  • Matching
  • Jumbled sentence
  • Calculated
  • Fill-in the blank
  • Short answer
  • Survey questions
  • Essay
  • Questions can contain other media elements (images, videos, audio)


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Automated Testing Management
  • The system can randomize the questions and answers.
  • Instructors can create self-assessments.
  • Instructors can set a time limit on a test.
  • Instructors can permit multiple attempts.
  • The students are allowed to review past attempts of a quiz.
  • Instructors can specify whether correct results are shown as feedback
Reviewer Comments
The system supports a MathML editor for the inclusion of mathematical formulas in questions. Test access can be restricted by IP range. Instructors can randomize answer order for multiple choice questions. Instructors can create questions sets and categorize questions by difficulty and skill. Instructors can import and export question sets, quiezzes, surveys, and self-assessments for sharing with other courses.

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Automated Testing Support
  • Instructors can create personal test banks.
  • Questions can be imported from external test banks that support QTI.
  • The system provides test analysis data.
Reviewer Comments
Analysis reports are created items and for tests allowing instructors to determine where students hae the most difficulty. If an instructor needs to fix a question, they can change the answer to a question and then automatically regrade the entire class or selective students as necessary on the new question.

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Online Marking Tools
  • Instructors can choose to mark each student on all questions or to mark each question on all students.
  • Instructors can choose to evaluate student responses anonymously.
  • Instructors can enable students to rate and comment on submissions of other students.


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Online Gradebook
  • When an instructor adds an assignment to the course, the software automatically adds it to the gradebook.
  • Instructors can add grades for offline assignments.
  • Instructors can add details to the gradebook in custom columns.
  • Instructors can export the scores in the gradebook to an external spreadsheet.
  • Instructors can create a course grading scale that can employ either percents, letter grades, or pass/fail metrics.
Reviewer Comments
Gradeable assignments, discussions and assessments are automatically added to the gradebook when added to a course. Name columns are frozen on left when scrolling grade book. Instructors can import gradebook columns and data from spreadsheet. Instructors can create grading form (rubric) columns in the grade book and evaluate cumulative performance within that grading form. This allows instructors to see more just students did well or poorly on an assignment

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Course Management
  • Instructors can selectively release assignments, assessments, and announcements based on specific start and stop dates.
  • Instructors can release materials based on a single criteria (date, grade, etc.) or instructors can use Boolean expressions to identify multiple selective release criteria.
  • Instructors can set up specific course content that is released on a specific date and must be completed by students before they continue with the course.
  • Instructors can link discussions to specific dates or course events.
  • Instructors can personalize access to specific course materials based on group membership.
  • Instructors can personalize access to specific course materials based on previous course activity.
  • Instructors can personalize access to specific course materials based on student performance.
Reviewer Comments
Program and institutional goals may be specified using the "Goals" tool and tied to particular activities in the course.

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Student Tracking
  • Instructors can track the frequency and duration of student access to individual course components.
  • Instructors can get reports showing the time and date and frequency students as an aggregated group accessed course content.
  • Instructors can get reports showing the number of times, time, date, frequency and IP address of each student who accessed course content, discussion forums, course assessments, and assignments.
  • Instructors can review the navigation record of each student.
Reviewer Comments
Instructors can export all student tracking data. Instructors can share tracking information with students. In Vista, tracking data can also be aggregated across departments or schools. Administrators can extract tracking data for students and faculty to optionally merge with other data sources and create reports using a third party reporting tool.

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Content Development Tools
Accessibility Compliance
  • The product provider self-reports that the software complies with Section 508 of the US Rehabilitation Act.
Reviewer Comments
The product complies with many of the WAI WCAG 1.0 AA and AAA guidelines are also. To help with content accessibility, the software implements many features for course designers as well. Blackboard is actively involved with universities around the world to use a functional approach and not just a “code-based” approach to achieving accessible courses for all users of online learning.

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Content Sharing/Reuse
  • Instructors can share content with other instructors and students through a central learning objects repository.
  • The repository can be system-wide or for individual organizational units.
  • For any content in the repository, users can view reports displaying every course in the system that is currently using the selected item.
Reviewer Comments
Content may be uploaded through WebDAV.

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Course Templates
  • The software provides support for template-based course creation.
  • Course content may be uploaded through WebDAV.
  • Course templates may contain selective release criteria and custom gradebook columns that persist with each new course instance.
  • The system allows administrators to use an existing course or a pre-defined template as a basis for a new course.
Reviewer Comments
Vista course templates are parallel to the course delivery environment and allows instructors and instructional designers to work in an environment unavailable to students. Templates may contain look and feel settings, course frameworks, or entire course curricula. Institutions can create one or more base templates which can be used as a starting point for creation of templates for specific courses with a particular pedagogical style and/or look and feel, thus providing choice, while increasing standardization.
Course templates may be copied (as new) to provide a starting point for another template or version of the same template. Instructors can work on a template for the next term while delivering courses based on this term. Instructors or administrators may copy sections to a template, thus ensuring instructors that the work they have done in one term may be carried forward as a template for sections in subsequent terms quickly and easily without affecting the original in any way. Administrators and instructors can organize learning objects into reusable learning sequences.

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Customized Look and Feel
  • The system provides default course look and feel templates.
  • Instructors can change the navigation icons and color schemes for a course.
  • Instructors can change the order and name of menu items for a course.
  • Institutions can create their own look and feel templates across the entire system, including their own institutional logos, headers, and footers.
  • The system can support multiple institutions, departments, schools or other organizational units on a single installation where each unit can apply its own look and feel templates as well as institutional images, headers and footers.


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Instructional Design Tools
  • Instructors can organize learning objects, course tools, and content into learning sequences that are reusable.
  • Instructors can create linear learning sequences organized hierarchically by course, lesson, and topic.
  • Instructors can reuse courses as templates for future lessons.
Reviewer Comments
All items can be conditionally released to provide appropriate progression or remediation as needed, based on time, grade book criteria, group membership and user ID

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Instructional Standards Compliance
  • IMS Content Packaging 1.1.3
  • IMS QTI 1.2.1
  • Microsoft LRN
  • SCORM 1.2


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Hardware/Software
Client Browser Required Reviewer Comments
Please view the full list. - http://www.webct.com/tuneup/viewpage?name=tuneup_browser_tuneup_information#browsers

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Database Requirements
  • The system supports Oracle.
  • The system supports MS SQL Server.


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UNIX Server
  • A Unix version is available.


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Windows Server
  • A Windows version is available.


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Company Details/Licensing
Company Profile Reviewer Comments
Blackboard Inc. (NASDAQ: BBBB) is a leading provider of enterprise software applications and related services to the education industry. Founded in 1997, Blackboard enables educational innovations everywhere by connecting people and technology. Millions of people use Blackboard everyday at academic institutions around the globe, including colleges, universities, K-12 schools and other education providers, as well as textbook publishers and student-focused merchants that serve education providers and their students. Blackboard is headquartered in Washington, D.C., with offices in North America, Europe, Australia and Asia.

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Costs / Licensing Reviewer Comments
The annual license fee is based on FTE students in an institution or consortium. Optional annual licenses, with three year terms are available.

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Open Source

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Optional Extras Reviewer Comments
The Blackboard Portfolio is available as an addon to Vista. In addition, many optional PowerLinks are available from software vendors or customers who have created them.

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Reference Citation: EduTools. (2010). CMS: Product Comparison System. Retrieved July 30, 2010 from http://www.edutools.info/compare.jsp?pj=4&i=599