Blackboard

If all you want to use it for is to check your grades, then this app is spot on. Very user friendly interface, allowing for easy navigation through courses. Excellent grades interface giving true mobile format. These little things are great and I give respect where it is due. My issues lie in further use of the app to do things like: Read/Write Course Messages, access the content bar that is on the left when in web GUI, use landscape mode, receive alerts for messages, and a few others I can’t think of at the moment. The issues clearly reside in the apps lack of true mobile interfaces for each aspect of B.B. The only issues I have had are when the app just opens the web GUI, and now you can’t access areas on the page like the content bar on the left, or even the header portion of the page where the account icon is. I would rate this 5 stars EASILY if the web-vs-mobile app issue is resolved.

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.

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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.

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**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.

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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.