Blackboard Learn vs Seismic Learning

Last Updated:

Our analysts compared Blackboard Learn vs Seismic Learning 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.
read more...

Seismic Learning (formerly called Lessonly) is a software platform designed to help businesses manage their learning and development programs. It caters to companies seeking to enhance employee training and development, offering features like course creation, content management, and reporting. Seismic Learning is particularly well-suited for medium and large businesses aiming to improve employee training, engagement, and retention while reducing training costs.

The platform boasts popular features such as course creation, content management, reporting, analytics, and social learning. Users appreciate its ease of use and customer support. Seismic Learning's pricing structure is not publicly available, so interested businesses should contact Seismic directly for pricing details.

read more...
$9,500 Annually
Get a free price quote
Tailored to your specific needs
$300 Monthly
Free Trial is unavailable →
Get a free price quote
Tailored to your specific needs
Small 
i
Medium 
i
Large 
i
Small 
i
Medium 
i
Large 
i
Windows
Mac
Linux
Android
Chromebook
Windows
Mac
Linux
Android
Chromebook
Cloud
On-Premise
Mobile
Cloud
On-Premise
Mobile

Product Assistance

Documentation
In Person
Live Online
Videos
Webinars
Documentation
In Person
Live Online
Videos
Webinars
Email
Phone
Chat
FAQ
Forum
Knowledge Base
24/7 Live Support
Email
Phone
Chat
FAQ
Forum
Knowledge Base
24/7 Live Support

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.  
read more...
  • Simulate Real-World Scenarios: Seismic Learning helps learners master skills by providing tools that help them practice situations similar to their daily activities. For example, users can pitch on video, give a presentation, practice chat conversations and ticket support, and more. For each lesson, you can provide feedback via a star-rating system and comments. 
  • Uncover Insights: The system lets you view a range of metrics related to training. Visual charts and graphs make information easy to digest. You can track things like satisfaction and engagement rates, course assignment and completion totals, quiz results, popular searches, event attendance, active users, overdue modules, and more. 
  • Add More Capabilities: Seismic Learning integrates with several popular applications to extend the system’s functionality to tools for HR, collaboration, sales, customer service and more. Supported integrations include Slack, Chrome, Zendesk, BambooHR, Zenefits, Namely and Salesforce. 
  • Manage Roles and Groups: Permission settings allow you to define the role each user falls under: learner, manager, creator or admin. This determines their access within the platform. When creating new users, you can also assign them to custom groups. By grouping users according to teams, you can ensure they all receive the right training. 
  • Support In-Person Training: The events feature is a means for conducting live, offline or instructor-led training. You can invite learners by giving them the link directly, sending an email, or publishing the event on the event dashboard. 
  • Create Unlimited Lessons: There’s no limit to the number of courses, learning paths and lessons you can build. Such flexibility lets you customize your training to the extent your organization needs. 
  • Organize Content: A tagging feature lets you organize each lesson and makes searching for specific information easy. It also allows you to group content together based on which team it’s for or the purpose it serves. 
  • Access Seismic Learning on Mobile: The Seismic Learning platform is mobile-friendly so users can access it from phones and other devices besides a desktop or laptop. This gives them freedom to log in to the site anywhere with an internet connection. 
read more...
  • 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. 
read more...
  • Lesson Builder: A visual drag-and-drop interface enables you to build lessons. You can add elements like images, videos, text, test questions and more. The system also supports SCORM files, including xAPI, AICC and cmi5. 
  • Learning Paths: This feature lets you build different learning paths to fit the needs of your company and ensures every learner receives relevant lessons. For example, you could create a learning path for sales reps with courses that pertain to their role. 
  • Content Hub: Seismic Learning University contains templates and best practices you can use. It also acts as a repository for pre-built courses, which your organization has full access to. Let Seismic Learning know which content you’d like to use and the support team will copy it to your platform. 
  • Single Sign-On (SSO): This capability allows users to log in to Seismic Learning with their credentials from another application. The platform integrates with Google Suite, SAML 2.0 and Azure Active Directory to provide this option. 
  • Admin Tools: Seismic Learning has several admin tools that make it easier to perform common tasks. Bulk uploads let you add a large number of employees at once, and PDF exporting lets you download files for offline use. The program also has webhooks for automatically sending information like reports to another database. 
read more...

Product Ranking

#6

among all
LMS Software

#2

among all
LMS Software

Find out who the leaders are

Analyst Rating Summary

74
64
14
0
82
71
100
50
Show More Show More
Collaboration
Compliance
Reporting and Dashboard
Content and Course Management
User Management and Gamification
Reporting and Dashboard
Content and Course Management

Analyst Ratings for Functional Requirements Customize This Data Customize This Data

Blackboard Learn
Seismic Learning
+ Add Product + Add Product
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 71 50 50 88 50 76 39 71 94 81 0 25 50 75 100
14%
0%
86%
0%
0%
100%
80%
0%
20%
70%
0%
30%
100%
0%
0%
33%
0%
67%
100%
0%
0%
50%
0%
50%
87%
0%
13%
87%
0%
13%
0%
0%
100%
0%
0%
100%
38%
0%
62%
54%
0%
46%
75%
0%
25%
38%
0%
62%
87%
0%
13%
73%
0%
27%
100%
0%
0%
100%
0%
0%
91%
0%
9%
82%
0%
18%

Analyst Ratings for Technical Requirements Customize This Data Customize This Data

71%
0%
29%
50%
0%
50%

User Sentiment Summary

Good User Sentiment 1521 reviews
Excellent User Sentiment 923 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.

94%
of users recommend this product

Seismic Learning has a 'excellent' User Satisfaction Rating of 94% when considering 923 user reviews from 4 recognized software review sites.

4.9 (18)
5.0 (14)
3.9 (789)
4.7 (576)
4.1 (456)
n/a
n/a
5.0 (145)
4.2 (54)
n/a
3.8 (204)
4.4 (188)

Awards

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

Compliance Award

Seismic Learning 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.
Show more
Intuitive UI: Over 95% of all reviewers who mentioned the ease of use found it simple to learn and adopt the system.
Friendly Customer Service: Reviewers who mentioned the customer service loved the staff and felt well-supported more than 90% of the time.
Pricing: A total of 90% of users who mentioned price were happy with it and felt they got a good value for their money.
Excellent for Company Training: The reviews felt this solution was excellent for training and onboarding over 80% of the time.
Show more
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.
.
Show more
Poor Customization Options: Just under 60% of all reviewers who mentioned customization said there weren’t enough options – and they couldn’t even access the CSS.
Formatting Issues: Around 60% of reviewers couldn’t get the font or color options they wanted and didn’t feel the design was adaptable enough.
Show more

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.

Show more

Seismic Learning is an LMS that works particularly well for corporate training. Reviewers liked how easy it was to use and adopt. Many used it to spread information to their employees and partners. They felt it was especially great at spreading new product information and helped train sales staff and customer service teams. Course and lesson creation were said to be extremely easy with this solution and users like the testing facilities in over half of the comments that mentioned it. On the other side, users weren’t happy with the customization and formatting options. They said that they weren’t able to find the options in text, colors and other design elements they wanted. It was also hard to adapt to all devices and change the more general look and feel of the platform. This solution is suited for small and medium businesses looking to train employees, especially in the sales and customer service departments.

Show more

Screenshots

Top Alternatives in LMS Software


Absorb LMS

Adobe Learning Manager

Brainier

Brightspace

Canvas

Cornerstone LMS

Docebo

LearnUpon

Litmos

Moodle

Schoology

Seismic Learning

SkyPrep

Spoke LMS

TalentLMS

Thinkific

Tovuti

Trainual

WorkRamp

Related Categories

Head-to-Head Comparison

WE DISTILL IT INTO REAL REQUIREMENTS, COMPARISON REPORTS, PRICE GUIDES and more...

Compare products
Comparison Report
Just drag this link to the bookmark bar.
?
Table settings