Blackboard Learn by Anthology vs. CrossKnowledge Learning Suite

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

CrossKowledge offers a superb library of learning content and a serviceable learning management system to go with it. If you’re looking for robust reporting or want to minimise the time you spend managing learning administration, you should look elsewhere.

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

• CrossKnowledge provides learning content across a wide array of subjects, and this content is delivered using various delivery methods (interactive e-learning, videos, reading material, activity journals, etc.)
• CrossKnowledge’s learning suite makes it easy to set up and roll out a highly customised learning management system.
• CrossKnowledge offers a mobile app that makes it easy to access both the learning management system as well as their learning content on the go.

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

• As a learning management system, CrossKnowledge’s backend is missing several key features for learning administrators
• It is immensely difficult to set up learning events and managing invitations to learners
• Reporting is extremely limited: you can only see the reports that CrossKnowledge seems necessary; you have very limited customisation options, and many of the basic reporting functions are simply impossible

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.

CrossKnowledge’s learning content makes it a no-brainer. Besides, while their LMS isn’t as powerful or robust as we’d have liked, it’s still serviceable and most of our learners aren’t directly affected by it.

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.

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.

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

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

Moodle is a far more powerful and flexible learning management system for learning administrators. Where CrossKnowledge has the edge is in its fabulous learning content library.

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

• It’s extremely difficult to evaluate ROI of a tool like CrossKnowledge, but it’s only been a little over a year since we rolled it out across the organisation and we’ve already made it part of our performance management system

Incentivized