Blackboard Learn vs Chamilo

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Our analysts compared Blackboard Learn vs Chamilo 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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Chamilo is a cloud-based open-source learning solution designed to improve access to education. It helps businesses develop virtual campuses to facilitate online or semi-online training. It empowers its users with the capability to accommodate over 3,500 connected learners simultaneously.

It comes with powerful inclusions like course catalogs, certificate generation, skill management, configuration and SCORM support. It also provides shopping carts for users to sell their e-learning courses and generate revenue.

It can connect over 3,500 learners, help users prepare training material, strengthen learning methods, install web hosting solutions for free, make use of synchronous and asynchronous communication channels and much more. Due to its cloud compatibility, it is accessible via iOS or Android and support can be extended via documentation and email.
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$9,500 Annually
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Tailored to your specific needs
$0 Open-Source
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Tailored to your specific needs
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Product Assistance

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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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  • Free Customizable Open-Source Platform: Chamilo is an open-source platform that empowers its users to customize their extensions and share their improvements with the online community. It lets educators control the content of their learning sessions to facilitate exciting studies. It is convenient, easy-to-use and easy to learn for students, compared to other online learning tools. 
  • Accessible Course Content: Its course contents are seamlessly accessible for students and teachers. This ease of access minimizes the rate of abandonment by remote learners. It also helps companies improve their chances of meeting their learning goals. It offers an editing tool that enables teachers to generate new content at an economical rate. The editing functionality lets users create self-evaluation processes, add tests and import external contents. 
  • Improved Access to Education: Chamilo allows users to enhance their access to education and knowledge across the globe. Backed by the Chamilo Association, it fosters a steady communication network between service providers and contributors. It enhances collaboration and builds a strong community of educators and trainers to improve course quality and teaching capabilities. 
  • Interoperability: It seamlessly integrates with external IT applications and systems to synergize workflows. It also offers integrations with Drupal and Joomla. For webinar options, users can integrate with open-source solutions like BigBlueButton, LibreOffice, OpenMeetings, Prestashop, Wiris and more. 
  • Less Bug Prone: It performs functions like editing, modifying, creating and deleting an object on the same platform. Its single platform solution lets modules and applications interact in a significantly less bug-prone manner. 
  • User-Friendly: Chamilo is intuitive and easy-to-use for educators as well as learners. Its technical requirements for usage are minimal, and users don’t have to suffer through a difficult learning curve to use its features. Its friendly interface lets teachers develop basic courses with text and multiple-choice questions for advanced courses. Some of its other features include conditional questions, assignments, group collaboration support and forums. Educators have a variety of options to structure their courses according to their preferences by organizing students into classes and pre-decide the lessons to be completed per session. 
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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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  • Flexible, Fast and Consistent: Chamilo organizes publication tools like categorization, target group selection, visibility and period of publication on its common interface. This commonality empowers it to be fast, consistent and flexible for its users. Its integrated portals and web services make it suitable for both educational institutions and businesses. 
  • Timed Learning Paths: It allows users to set a minimum time limit per user on a learning path. These time limits ensure that a course will not be considered complete until a pre-decided number of hours to study it has passed. Time-limit features help users meet regulatory compliance guidelines required for eLearning programs. 
  • Built-In Course Authoring: Chamilo’s authoring tool lets users structure their courses, add descriptions, update learning paths and include objectives and methodologies in their classes. Educators can organize their course contents using the learning path tool and guide their students through a specific learning experience. It also helps educators evaluate their students’ performance. 
  • Certificate Generation: Chamilo lets users generate certificates for students that have completed course modules successfully. Its included templates provide all the relevant data needed to automatically generate certificates. Users can also customize these default templates to suit their requirements using the certificates editor tool. 
  • Communication Forums: Chamilo’s forum tool allows users to exchange opinions, ideas and information regarding learning paths. It helps users find answers to questions related to a course without having to endlessly browse through massive amounts of information. Forums let multiple participants engage in discussions in public or semi-public spaces, strengthening learning support and fostering the exchange of ideas. It helps learners chart an informal path within a controlled environment, where they can like and dislike other students’ ideas and opinions. Students have the opportunity to express ideas and share interesting information. 
  • Plans Training Sessions: Chamilo lets businesses plan training sessions for their employees and enhance their performance. It keeps administrators informed about upcoming training sessions and their durations per week or month. Employees can sync their calendars with upcoming training sessions, which are color-coded on a monthly or yearly basis. It helps employees inform administrators well in advance of planned training sessions. 
  • Ranking: Chamilo lets educators add rankings to test results after evaluating them. When ranking mode is enabled, learners can view their scores in a ranking table containing the top scores. It encourages students to attempt a test several times to secure the best possible score. 
  • Visual Reports: Its updated student progress tracker provides learners with data in a visually appealing manner. Student progress is represented in graphical charts, which display data like learning path progress, dates when the course was accessed and time spent studying course contents. Graphs help educators assess their course modules and gauge the number of learners currently studying or connected to the course. 
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Product Ranking

#6

among all
LMS Software

#104

among all
LMS Software

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Analyst Rating Summary

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Analyst Ratings for Functional Requirements Customize This Data Customize This Data

Blackboard Learn
Chamilo
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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 1 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.

100%
of users recommend this product

Chamilo has a 'excellent' User Satisfaction Rating of 100% when considering 1 user reviews from 1 recognized software review sites.

4.9 (18)
5.0 (1)
3.9 (789)
n/a
4.1 (456)
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4.2 (54)
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3.8 (204)
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Awards

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

Compliance Award

Chamilo 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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Open Source and Free: Chamilo is a breath of fresh air for organizations seeking a robust LMS without the hefty price tag. Its open-source nature eliminates licensing fees, making it an attractive option for budget-conscious institutions.
User-Friendly Interface: Users consistently praise Chamilo's intuitive design. Its straightforward layout allows both instructors and students to navigate the platform with ease, minimizing the learning curve often associated with new software.
Flexible and Customizable: Chamilo doesn't believe in a one-size-fits-all approach. Its highly customizable nature allows institutions to tailor the platform to their specific needs, creating a learning environment that aligns with their unique pedagogical approach.
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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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Limited Mobile Friendliness: Some users have reported that the mobile interface is not as user-friendly as other learning management systems.
Occasional Technical Issues: Users have mentioned encountering occasional bugs or technical glitches, which can disrupt the learning process.
Smaller User Community: Compared to more popular LMS platforms, Chamilo has a smaller user community, which may result in less readily available support or resources.
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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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Want to know if Chamilo is the chameleon of learning management systems, adapting to any need? User reviews from the last year suggest Chamilo is a solid, if somewhat basic, learning management system best suited for smaller organizations or those on a tight budget. Users consistently praise its ease of use, highlighting the clean and intuitive interface that even the least tech-savvy individuals find accessible. One user even compared setting up the platform to using "softaculous," implying a level of simplicity rarely found in learning management systems. This straightforwardness makes Chamilo a popular choice for businesses dipping their toes into the e-learning pool for the first time. However, Chamilo's simplicity can also be its downfall. Users needing advanced features or extensive customization options may find Chamilo lacking. One user expressed frustration with the limited template options and the lack of readily available tutorials for more complex tasks. While Chamilo offers essential tools like course creation and content management, it doesn't boast the bells and whistles of competitors like LearnUpon or Adobe Learning Manager. This isn't necessarily a dealbreaker, as Chamilo's affordability makes it an attractive option for organizations prioritizing value over a vast feature set. Ultimately, Chamilo is a practical, no-frills learning management system that excels in ease of use and affordability, making it a perfect fit for budget-conscious organizations or those seeking a straightforward platform for basic e-learning needs.

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