LMS Review Frequently Asked Questions

A learning management system (LMS) is an online platform with a suite of integrated tools for delivering web-enhanced, hybrid, and online courses. NIU’s current LMS is Blackboard Learn.

During the 2020-2021 academic year, NIU was in the final year of a three-year contract with Blackboard, the current Learning Management System (LMS) vendor. While faculty and student usage of Blackboard remains high, the university had not conducted a formal evaluation of other LMS’s in a number of years. This was an appropriate time, before the university pursued another renewal of Blackboard, to conduct a thorough evaluation to determine whether an alternative LMS should be considered.

The Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning (CITL) and the Division of Information Technology (DOIT) coordinated the review. A task force consisting of an executive committee, technical committee, and advisory committee with representatives from across the university provided input into the review process. All NIU faculty, staff, and students had opportunity to provide feedback.

The evaluation was broad in scope with input from all faculty, staff, and students on not only their current satisfaction with NIU’s current LMS (Blackboard) but also what features are desired in a LMS moving forward. The review included in-depth feature comparison and demonstrations of the leading learning management systems used in higher education today.

The evaluation supplied the data needed to prepare a recommendation as to whether an alternative LMS should be considered at this time.

The LMS Review Task Force established the criteria to be used in the review, timing and process for review, and scoring. Examples of criteria that other institutions previously used in their LMS review were reviewed.

No. The review process resulted in a recommendation to renew our current institutional license with Blackboard.

While each system has strengths and weaknesses, Blackboard received the highest review score, taking into account all the review elements. The overall scoring included feedback from faculty, instructors, staff and students; technical review; pricing (both for transition and multi-year contract); roadmap of new feature development; and vendor support for transition and training.

Continuing with Blackboard allows faculty to be thoughtful and deliberate about transitioning to a new system on a longer timeframe. Blackboard Learn Ultra has a robust feature set that is being added to rapidly over the next year, and Blackboard provides enterprise-level security and reporting options we need as a large institution. Staying with Blackboard is also the most affordable solution to the university and provides the most value to our students and faculty.

We strongly recommend faculty transition to the Ultra Course View as soon as they are comfortable doing so, with the support of the Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning (CITL). Faculty can learn more by attending a workshop or taking advantage of a CITL partnership to work one-on-one with a member of their team. Blackboard course templates are also available that provide a quick start for building your course in Ultra.

The Original Course View will become unavailable at some point, and all NIU faculty and instructors will have to adopt the Ultra Course View at that time. Right now, that date has not yet been determined. The Original Course View will be available at NIU through May 2023, at a minimum.

The Division of IT and the Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning will be working closely with their advisory and governance committees as well as with Blackboard to identify an appropriate timeline for sunsetting Blackboard Learn Original.

Blackboard is updated on a weekly basis, and new features are introduced every month. Since NIU introduced the Ultra Course View in May 2019, Blackboard has added over 50 new features and enhancements to Ultra. Blackboard has even more on their roadmap to be released. Stay up-to-date with new features on What’s New in Ultra?

NIU’s new contract with Blackboard includes adoption of Ally, a revolutionary product that integrates seamlessly into Blackboard and focuses on making digital course content more accessible. As the instructor adds course content, the content passes through an accessibility checklist and is scored, and machine learning algorithms perform a full structural and visual analysis. Alternative formats are automatically generated for students and the instructor is provided feedback on how to ensure future content is as accessible as possible.