1. We were curious to see how the successor of Ellumiate vRoom would do, a tool previously ranked 18 in our comparison of online meeting tools.
2. The renowned IT-research organization Gartner Inc. lists Blackboard as one of only 12 other vendors among the illustrious gang of Adobe, Microsoft, IBM and AT&T. So the tool must be good, right?

Wrong! After our extensive tests we were surprised to see a phenomenon that usually occurs the other way around. Web conferencing tools tend to get better with every version upgrade and usually climb up a bit in our overview – if only temporarily. Blackboard Collaborate disproved this trend and crashed all the way to 33. The only tool ranked lower is Microsoft NetMeeting, which we really only keep in our ranking for comparison and for which development and upgrading has stopped years back.

So did the programmers do a bad job after Blackboard acquired Elluminate and tried to integrate the vRoom-platform with the Wimba-technology? Well no, we wouldn’t go that far. For basic ‘learning management’ scenarios in which there are clearly defined roles for the participants Blackboard Collaborate works just fine. You can see that the platform has developed from the very specialized field of Learning Management Systems (LMS). If you are looking for a tool that allows you to be flexible in your diverse collaboration scenarios, Blackboard’s tool fails to deliver in areas that are crucial. Just to give you some examples:

• There is no invitation functionality integrated into Outlook.
• Switching control of keyboard and mouse was not possible in our tests – even though this feature is mentioned on the vendor’s website.
• When setting up a meeting the tool does not create a meeting specific ID which means that participants from former meetings can join any time.

Blackboard Collaborate disproves the phrase of “the name says it all”. The product name “Collaborate” promises a set of functionality and a user experience the tool fails to deliver. Blackboard should consider sticking to its strengths and concentrate on the LMS-market in which we would say it  has a good standing, and rightfully so. And the IT-researchers from Gartner should perhaps reconsider their selection of vendors for their “Magic Quadrant for Web Conferencing” since for Blackboard it seems quite arbitrary.

I noticed online training in your Applications sidebar, but you evaluated the WebEx Meeting Centre. WebEx Training Centre provides enhanced functionality specifically designed for training. Have you evaluated this product against competitors in that field?

Since webconferencing-test.com is a non-profit initiative we only have limited time to spend on reviewing different solutions. Unfortunately this means that we are not able to add a new branch to our website by testing special-purpose online meeting solutions for classroom-like online trainings. We’ve got our hands full with keeping our ranking up-to-date and comprehensive as is.

But of course we do have something to say on the topic:

The biggest challenge to evaluating web conferencing solutions tailored to classroom, training, and online exam requirements is the intransparency of this niche market. This market includes vendors like WebEx (Training Centre) and Citrix Online with GoToTraining, who extended their underlying web conferencing technology to serve online training purposes. Others like Saba and Elluminate provide a blended web conferencing / eLearning solution – and there are dozens of vendors delivering solutions dedicated solely to virtual classroom scenarios, like Learning Management Systems (LMS), Skytap, eLecta and GC Learning Services.

Read the full evaluation.