Blackboard Learn vs GoSkills

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Our analysts compared Blackboard Learn vs GoSkills based on data from our 400+ point analysis of LMS Software, user reviews and our own crowdsourced data from our free software selection platform.

Product Basics

Blackboard is an educational management tool used commonly in K-12, higher education, online education and corporate training. It’s cloud-based and has several add ons including Learn, Open LMS, Classroom, Predict, Intelligence, Ally, Collaborate and more. All have different specialties that add to the primary online education functions.

The core product, Blackboard Learn, includes course management, mobile accessibility and insights into data and analytics. Upgraded versions have more robust facilities, including advanced web conferencing, virtual classrooms and more in-depth reporting.
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GoSkills is an online training platform that teaches business skills to professionals. Companies can assign, track and manage content from third parties, and create customized content. It’s served over 600 businesses and 26,000 learners and supports up to 1000 people per organization. Overall, it helps management promote learning, track progress, manage course catalogs, create training resources and more. It offers 70 courses in design, development, finance, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Office, productivity, project management, Six Sigma, soft skills and more.
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$9,500 Annually
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$2.40 Annual, free, monthly, per-user, quote-based
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Tailored to your specific needs
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Chromebook
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Mobile
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Product Assistance

Documentation
In Person
Live Online
Videos
Webinars
Documentation
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Videos
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Email
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Chat
FAQ
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Knowledge Base
24/7 Live Support
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Product Insights

  • Mass Communications: A message can be written and then sent via social media, email, voice message, SMS or push notification to everyone who needs to see it.nbsp;
  • Student Retention: It provides data on incoming and outgoing students, which helps with the development of student retention strategies. Some functions within the dashboard are also specifically geared toward targeting at-risk learners. 
  • Accessibility: Not only does it allow for accessible file formats such as semantic HTML, audio files, ePub and electronic braille, but it can audit content sent out by instructors and return with annotations to improve accessibility. It is also fully compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act. 
  • Parental Involvement: Parents get access to see how students are doing and address potential problems early in the process. 
  • Multiple Translations: Over 15 different languages are available, including Arabic, English, Chinese (both simplified and traditional), Dutch, Russian, Korean and more. 
  • Implementation: Through a partner program, users can get help with implementation through technical support and strategy analysis. 
  • Accreditation Tracking/Documentation: The assessment and accreditation solution makes institutional reporting automatic, helps provide documentation where needed and streamlines evidence collection. 
  • Partnerships: More services are available for buyers who use partner programs. This support may be technical, marketing or strategic and varies depending on the different levels of partnership.  
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  • Better Employee Engagement: Help employees feel more focused and motivated through personalized training and lessons, progress tracking, skills tests to assess gaps and course achievements. Let learners set and track their own goals.
  • Increased Software Skills: Grant employees a greater understanding of technology and essential work competencies. Develop stronger tech literacy among all employees while providing a simple UI. Increase efficiency and profitability for the entire company.
  • Future-Proofing: Monitor the most up-to-date skills so workers can improve and keep current on new ideas. Target and minimize skill gaps, and allow workers to be successful and continuously grow in their careers and development.
  • Create Learning Culture: Promote sharing information throughout the organization, making continuous improvement a priority. Analyze the courses completed, completion time, certificates earned and exams that have been taken and adjust accordingly to create more effective training programs.
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  • Integration: It can be integrated with other essential educational programs such as Student Information Systems, lunch systems, online grade books and others to make collecting data easy. 
  • Collaboration: Through web conferencing and virtual classrooms, students, peers and coworkers can collaborate on projects and content creation. 
  • Mobile App: The app, which is available across several devices, offers mobile-friendly content that’s been adjusted to flip less on a phone screen. Learners can access tests, quizzes, notes and more. 
  • SaaS: It’s a software-as-a-service or cloud-based product. This means the hosting is online and not local. 
  • Templates: When instructors create courses, they can choose from several pre-made templates and customize as needed. 
  • Strategic Planning: Extra services include strategic planning, which comes with market research, help to develop a comprehensive strategy, deployment support and more. 
  • E-Commerce: It allows users to buy or sell courses, training materials and other content. This can be used as a revenue source or to find more information for a program. 
  • Sales Training and Development: In addition to its uses in K-12 and higher education, it helps with the training of employees to keep them in compliance or certified in a corporate setting. Individual workers can be tracked, and areas of improvement can be easily identified. 
  • Registration: It manages learners throughout the enrollment process and can help them sign up along pre-defined learning paths or prerequisites. 
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  • Course Creation and Management: Deploy over 70 courses and allow instructors to create custom content. Create an unlimited amount of courses with xAPI, SCORM or other standard formats. Give instructors the ability to organize their categories and link to outside content. Provide classes, external resources, embedded videos and more. Use courses that follow the set standards such as AICC, CMI5, SCORM and xAPI. Deliver classes and then track completion rates. Access over 2,000 lessons and 200 hours of instructor-led video content.
  • Employee Training: Identify skill gaps and assign the appropriate materials by teams. Provide advanced onboarding to new employees while allowing current workers to grow and access information to make them more effective in their current positions.
  • Role Assignment: Create learner groups of different sizes and types and deliver specific classes to them accordingly. Generate progress reports for each group, and break down the information to create the best learning possible. Assign appropriate courses to the right teams.
  • Custom Branding: Deliver branded content with business logos and personalized themes. Provide a more cohesive user experience that blends well with the existing UI and tech stack to cut down on confusion.
  • Social Learning: Use collaborative and gamified functions to increase engagement and allow for more social learning across the board. Encourage friendly competition and give learners the power to share materials and discuss their lessons to promote a culture of continuous improvement.
  • Mobile-Friendly: Enable the mobile app so employees can use it in multiple locations on various devices such as smartphones, tablets, laptops and PCs. Use responsive design, so content is accessible no matter what the platform. Let them train on a convenient schedule for them, so each user gets the best experience and the most out of their lessons.
  • Micro-Learning: Deploy short, highly-targeted lessons for learners to digest easily. Helps workers learn between tasks and especially helps those that don’t have a lot of time throughout the day but still want to invest in learning and personal development. Promote classes led by instructors, but self-driven, so courses are accessible at the student’s convenience.
  • Gamification: Create goals for workers based on time tracking, daily work streaks, or other customized benchmarks. When they succeed, they can collect coins and get rewards for reaching a certain status.
  • Certification: Provide courses for certification such as project management or Six Sigma. Earn verified achievement certificates upon completion that users can showcase on LinkedIn. Promotes a sense of pride and the approbation of peers.
  • Continuing Education: Empower students to earn continuing education or professional development units. Helps in updating or maintaining certifications and licenses. Increase compliance by giving learners the resources to train and test until they have the necessary skills.
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Product Ranking

#6

among all
LMS Software

#24

among all
LMS Software

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Analyst Rating Summary

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100
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Analyst Ratings for Functional Requirements Customize This Data Customize This Data

Blackboard Learn
GoSkills
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AI-based Capabilities Assessments Collaboration Compliance Content And Course Management ECommerce Learning Delivery Mobile Capabilities Platform Capabilities Reporting And Dashboard User Management And Gamification 14 82 100 100 91 0 68 78 87 100 91 0 25 50 75 100
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User Sentiment Summary

Good User Sentiment 1521 reviews
Excellent User Sentiment 304 reviews
79%
of users recommend this product

Blackboard Learn has a 'good' User Satisfaction Rating of 79% when considering 1521 user reviews from 5 recognized software review sites.

96%
of users recommend this product

GoSkills has a 'excellent' User Satisfaction Rating of 96% when considering 304 user reviews from 4 recognized software review sites.

4.9 (18)
5.0 (20)
3.9 (789)
4.8 (221)
4.1 (456)
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4.8 (58)
4.2 (54)
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3.8 (204)
4.5 (5)

Awards

SelectHub research analysts have evaluated Blackboard Learn and concluded it earns best-in-class honors for Compliance.

Compliance Award

GoSkills stands above the rest by achieving an ‘Excellent’ rating as a User Favorite.

User Favorite Award

Synopsis of User Ratings and Reviews

Grading: A total of 80% of users who mentioned the grading capabilities felt it worked well and saved them time.
Effective Communication: Over 70% of users who mentioned communications features were thrilled with the discussion boards, messaging, live classrooms and other features.
Great Customer Support: More than two-thirds of reviewers who mentioned the customer support had good experiences with the staff.
Easy to Use: Users felt that the UI worked well in over 50% of reviews.
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Highly Recommend: Over 90% of users who gave advice recommended this system to others.
Short and Sweet Lessons: Learners were overwhelmingly pleased with the small, easily digested lessons in more than 90% of comments discussing its micro-learning structure.
Good Features: Over 90% of reviewers who discussed the functionality were pleased with the features.
Excellent Courses: Users said the courses were helpful and high quality in over 90% of comments about them.
Good Customer Service: More than 90% of learners who touched on customer service were satisfied.
Useful Quizzes: Assessments were said to be helpful and practical in over 90% of reviews that mentioned them.
Affordable: Over 90% of reviewers who discussed price felt it was affordable.
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Poor Mobile Function: Around 75% who mentioned the app said they had issues with the design, especially on mobile.
Issues with Features: Over 41% of users said there were holes in the functionality of the integrations, grading features and said there was too much text on the website.
Steep Learning Curve: While many said the UI was easy-to-use, over 40% of those mentioned it said it took a long time to learn.
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Slow Presentations: The presentations were too slow for over 90% of reviewers discussing them.
Courses Don’t Go Deep Enough: Just under 90% of users who talked about the lessons said they were beginner level and didn’t offer in-depth information for individuals who wanted to dig deeper.
Can’t Access Courses After Completion: Learners who talked about trying to access courses after completion had issues or couldn’t get the information over 80% of the time.
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Blackboard is an online learning solution used most commonly in educational institutions. As one of the biggest players in the market, its users appreciate its features, useability, grading functions and the different channels of communication. The most common complaint was that it’s hard to learn. However, many said it was easy to navigate after getting over the initial learning curve. Though many people liked its features, there were gaps and additional functionalities wished for in almost every category. Its lack of accessibility was also an issue for some users. This solution is good for institutions looking to implement a standardized learning solution. However, it’s important to compare it to its big competitors as some complained it was generic or too similar to other systems. Still, this can be an extremely efficient platform for online and blended learning.

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GoSkills provides training and professional development to employees. Most reviewers loved the class themselves. They described them as being available in “bite-sized chunks,” perfect for learning amid a busy day. Most liked the courses, customer service and price. Commenters were happy with the functionality, including tools for professional development, knowledge acquisition, and a way to learn-on-the go. Lastly, they felt the quizzes were effective and reinforced their learning. While users generally loved the videos and presentations, they also said the pace was too slow. Some manually adjusted the speed. Reviewers who wanted more detailed information or advanced training from a class were disappointed to find that the courses were more surface-level and beginner-oriented. Others had difficulty accessing the courses after completion or were unable to do so. Overall, this is an excellent training tool for small to medium businesses looking to increase compliance and foster a community of continuous learning.

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