Blackboard Learn Hack 8.9 + Redeem Codes

The app is very user friendly and easy to navigate. I solely used blackboard on my laptop but had discovered my laptop broke the literal morning I started class, so I decided to download the app so I wouldn’t have to navigate blackboard on my phones browser and could more easily access my instructor’s pages. This definitely does the trick for that. The only issue I have is that the due dates tab is not fully accurate, at least for me. I have 3/4 of my classes online, so it really helps me to just click the “due dates” tap and be able to access each assignment that’s due soon. It may be due to the instructor, I have no idea, but I can see where my grades would become horrid after missing a few assignments every week. This was my first week of class and there were about 3 assignments that weren’t displayed, but I was aware of because of a syllabus or class discussion. Please make sure you’re paying attention and don’t rely solely on the app for that!! Otherwise, you may find yourself in a rut of 0 in the grade book. Aside from that, the app completely simplifies my experience with blackboard and I can’t believe I went 3 semesters without it.

The UI/UX of this app is abysmal, unpleasant to look at, extremely difficult to navigate. Previous school used Canvas which was amazing compared to BB. Fixing the user interface would be a great start. The courses tab always loads my “current” courses, but it’s actually a list of every course I’ve ever taken. If I accidentally tap on a course that has ended I have to wait forever for the app to tell me it can’t load the course. Menu items are buried in cumbersome sidebar that is easy to miss. Grades and assignments take way too many clicks and are stored in very different locations. Nothing is linked - I should be able to easily navigate to different course components without backing up to the main screen. There is no way to select any preferences, for instance, whenever I open the app I am dropped in the announcements page rather than courses - this should be a choice. The interface is absolutely hideous - it reminds me of a geocities webpage from the 90’s. Finally, many components of the app are cumbersome. It’s very difficult to access pdfs and some portions of the app open an in app browser without the open to open in a local browser. I find it exceedingly frustrating that BB hasn’t made a single attempt to improve this app in many years - hopefully major Universities will start taking their business to better platforms because this app shows a company that has no incentive to improve their product.

The app is very annoying and needs a lot of work. Why is it so difficult to navigate in the app and what’s the point of asking me if I want to stay logged in if it never keeps you logged in. Everything is all over the place and unorganized. Like other people have mentioned you have to do so many clicks just to navigate through the app. There should be a column on the bottom that has the list of grades for every class. Also why is there a calendar on the app if nothing is synced to it automatically? What’s the point of me manually adding homework on the calendar if it takes so long just to log in to the app. I can just go on my own calendar at this point. Also if we get homework synced to the calendar if we can be able to download the calendar as well or if we can sync it to our iCal and Google calendar that would be great. I go to see what’s my upcoming work I need to do and it just gives me what’s due and the date even though I have already completed that work. It should at least have it crossed out or something with the due date. Instead of having it say “due in the next 2 weeks” it should just say “due soon” or “upcoming homework” because I have it telling me that there’s homework due in the next 2 weeks but it’s literally due in a few days. How does that make sense? This app makes me go crazy. Please fix this🙏🏻

In a word, I would describe this Ap as “Fine”. I don’t love anything about it and I don’t really think it does a great job at anything, or even a good job at anything. But it doesn’t do a bad job either. It allows one to see assignment due dates and grades and make submissions in a way that isn’t pleasant, but isn’t hard to figure out either. Some notes Give me a place to view my calendar regarding due dates, for all classes in one place. This would be huge and I cannot stress this enough. Similar vein, give me a place where I can see all of my grades at the same time. Less significant but would still be pretty good. Otherwise, maybe set it up so I can submit something from Google Drive/Notability/GoodNotes/Pages straight to an assignment, something that is possible with Canvas and Schoology. Set up the assignments so that I can see the rubric/goal of the assignment in the same spot that I submit the assignment. As is I have to go back and forth between the two and it’s annoying and adds steps. Could just be the way my professor has it setup, but if so all of my professors have done this so … Finally kinda buggy sometimes. File formats wont open, or not well within the app, and this is true with a lot of links as well.

While this app is the backbone of schools in my region, they have been responsible for every grade of mine below an 90% due to their service being slow, time-consuming to learn thoroughly, and ineffective at training teachers who are forced to rely on the blackboard service. This app specifically doesn’t have a half of the capabilities we have on the computer, won’t even show an entire page of an assignment, makes it nearly impossible to find modules, won’t allow you to test or quiz (which I need since I work on an iPad and the mobile site is just as horrendous), and doesn’t support many basic functions we have come to expect. At times, it will only show certain assignments on the app, so when you log in on the computer, you see that there are many more parts or sections due. The discussion boards are old fashioned. It would be great to give those more of a feed-like feeling, rather than an assignment. I would like to get a notification if someone responds to my discussion, so I could reply back if they are asking a question. Since we are all online, I miss the type of classroom connections that Blackboard does not offer but plenty of other services make an effort to provide. I will be pushing my SGA to pressure our college to make the move towards Google Classroom. It’s time.

No university should use this garbage. I attend Savanah College of Art and Design and the following problems have been consistent across versions of Blackboard: You cannot view the course syllabus. You cannot save drafts. You cannot embed images into discussion posts. Course videos do not display; instead there’s a message that says you must allow third party tracking. And for a solid week, I haven’t been able to get into the app at all; efforts to log in only bring a message that the server cannot be reached. This company is the epitome of incompetence. And good luck trying to reach someone in customer service there. UPDATE: After a redesign, the app still has loads of problems. Files must be downloaded to view rather than opening in-browser, which is a problem when you’re in a creative writing class and constantly getting loads of classmate documents to review. Navigation is not intuitive. You can “save draft” now which is an improvement but still lots of other issues that make using the app cumbersome and time-consuming. Logging in and opening courses is a nightmare. You constantly get cycled back to a meta-menu homepage. Videos won’t screen unless you enable Blackboard to utilize three-party tracking- why? Until then you’re befuddled on why access is being denied.

The app opens and lets you select your class just fine, and it will show you the sections the course is categorized into but it won’t actually load the content of those categories. This is particularly bad with the homework and grade aspects.
There is a category for homework due this week, but it doesn’t actually load in homework that is coming up by itself. In order for it to be able to pull this information you have to individually load every section of the course. only then will display the upcoming assignments, otherwise it just says that there’s nothing to due.
Furthermore, if you miss homework, you won’t necessarily see it reflected in the grade at the top of the page. similar to the homework, it only counts the assignments if you load every single one individually and the due date has passed. This means that if you got a 100% on your first homework assignment, your grade will be a 100% at the top of the page, even if you’ve missed every single assignment afterwards until you reload every single thing from the class. Only then will the grade at the top of the page reflect what you actually have.

I am giving this app a one-star review because even though the app is useful in many ways, there’s still a lot that can be worked on or fixed.

One of the most annoying things about this app (and everyone agrees with me on this) is the fact that you have to keep logging in every single time I open and try to access the app, which is about 7-8 times a day. This is so inconvenient because as a student I do not want to keep logging in and entering all my information when I’m trying to do homework, study, and look at my grades. I have tested it out and I’ve found out that if I close the app and open it back up about 10-15 minutes later I find myself logged out. I have also asked around and I am not the only one who has to deal with and every single person can agree with me about the fact that it is, indeed, annoying. This is an issue that needs to be fixed because its inconvenience is tremendous.

Another feature that could be worked on is the design of the app itself. I believe that it does not go well with current apps that are in the market. Its design is still blocky and the transitions between sections are grotesque. I believe more friendly, rounded and somewhat colorful sections within the app will help its aesthetic design.

**UPDATE: The app was working great until the second day of school this semester. It stopped working completely and after two days I deleted the app and re-downloaded it. Now it is telling me my school is not even on the list so I am unable to even login. When it works, it works great. Often times, it does not work at all! :( wish the developer would just fix it and leave it alone!

UPDATE: blackboard has fixed the issue and the app is working great again so I revised my review to four stars! I would have gave them five but it did take over three weeks to fix the issue and I was unable to login during that time!

Oh my, there seems to be an issue on our side. After I put my login information in it redirects me to the statement above wearing it says there's an issue. I reported it to the developer who then told me to contact my general IT helpdesk at school. The school has now put a ticket in with the problem. It's still not working after three weeks and I have been unable to use the app at all. When I first started using this app, it was great. I could post my discussions, assignments and take quizzes on here. But I now have been unable to access the app at all for three weeks. Please fix this issue and I will update my rating.

Just when I thought Blackboard’s clunky, awkward, and ineffective text editor couldn’t get any worse, the mobile app appears. While the mobile version of BB is very slightly more navigable than using Safari on the BB site, it is still such a clunky and non-intuitive interface! But nothing is worse than the 30-year-old look and feel of the ever-frustrating text editor. This editor barely qualifies as a WYSIWYG (Google it).

Due to the instability of the text editor, it has always been necessary to compose my assignments in Word before pasting them into BB. This new app is the worst yet, however, for correctly displaying my writing. Cases is point, footnote numbers are bracketed rather than superscripted, paragraph spacing is greatly exaggerated, indentation is lost in translation, italics and bolding are removed from the text, font faces are substituted, font sizes are adjusted, etc.—the result, my Discussion Board posts look like a fifth grader trying to do graduate work.

I have petitioned my institution to find a solution other than Blackboard for coursework submission, now I am imploring Blackboard to enter into the 21st century of computer programming. Please. I could live with all of the other oddities and quirks, if only BB had a decent text editor.