I found a feature within Absorb that I can't do without. What is the pricing structure they have in place for this LMS? I can't seem to find this without entering my details for a sales call.
I currently use Moodle and also the ability to have people buy online and have their log on details sent to them automatically. It's a must have for us!
We use Docebo: it is more "corporate oriented" than moodle, very fast and user friendly both on user and admin side, and with a very powerful and customizable reporting system.
I am also working with Docebo and like it a lot, it seems to work well with Articulate which is even better!
We've been using Educadium's EasyCampus. I was wondering if any of you had an opinion on this LMS, I don't have a lot of experience with it yet and I'm not sure how it stands up compared to Moodle. If anyone has used it before, I'd love to hear what you think of it compared to other LMSs.
I found a feature within Absorb that I can't do without. What is the pricing structure they have in place for this LMS? I can't seem to find this without entering my details for a sales call.
Cheers,
Dave
Hi Dave - hope you are well?
Just dropped you a line in the email re Absorb. We can talk about the shopping cart details also.
But to be fair, SkillSoft should be considered more of a content developer than an LMS developer. Their content comes first and is unmatched by any other company I've seen.
It was literally the only system that suited our needs within our budget (v. affordable compared to other LMSs on the market, great for a non-profit/academic org like ours). Pros, off the top of my head:
- Our learning management system is open to the public. Inquisiq was the only system we found that natively handled self registration and enrollment, with a registration form that was fully customizable. Most other LMSs were primarily suited for pre-enrolled learners. That said, it can handle pre-enrollments and user grouping pretty well also.
- It was the most user friendly, easy to use and navigate, intuitive interface we came across. A lot of our learners are older/not very tech-savvy and we rarely get questions about navigating the system.
- SCORM 1.2 and 2004 compatible
- Searchable course catalog, with options to create multiple sub catalogs or custom/private course catalogs
- Extensive reporting capabilities that are highly customizable
- Easy certificate generation
- e-Commerce functionality
- A lot of customization possible wrt graphics, look and feel etc.
- Can be used to deploy e-learning modules as well as schedule classroom sessions etc.
- Decent support, pretty quick with e-mail responses to tech support queries
Lots of good feedback here about LMS's. I find it interesting that there are few to none who have mentioned using Articulate Online (AO) and I was hoping to hear more about AO. We are still searching for a user friendly LMS to replace Taleo and my original thought was to consider AO so we could have a "one stop shop" for design with Articulate/Storyline and publish directly to AO. As I search the community for AO comments, there doesn't seem to be much out there and what I do see is a lot of " sorry that feature isn't available now but you can submit a request ...." Which prompts me to ask the moderators " Is there a new version/update/replacement in the works for Articulate Online? and if so, how close are you to rolling it out? I'm keeping an open mind and researching other solutions but I would still prefer a one stop shop with 100% Articulate product support.
So has anyone looked at Torch LMS from Prometheus? We are starting our search for a new LMS to replace Taleo. I am currently going back through the documents that were used when Taleo was chosen 3 years ago (when it was Learn.com). I am creating a document that will list our needs and then start looking at what's out there (and there seems to be 100's out there). I've created a list of what's been mentioned here, but noticed that Torch LMS hasn't been mentioned. Just curious if anyone has used it. Thanks.
Marta, sounds like you and I are on the same mission .. to replace Taleo. I have not heard of Torch but I'll research it. I've checked on several others that look promising i.e. Absorb, Meridian, KnowledgePresenter. My goal is to find something that's user friendly even if the cost is greater. Have you considered Articulate Online?
I haven't run any demos of Absorb but I would most certainly appreciate hearing your opinion of Absorb (pros and cons). We have been with Taleo, formerly Learn.com and now Oracle for several years and want to move to something that is user friendly. I have more to say about Taleo but I'm not comfortable sharing my opinions of it on the community. If you would like to know more feel free to email me.
As a Taleo/Learn/(now) Oracle LMS content admin, I can agree with what's been posted. It IS cumbersome, and what's worse, the support/training is bad. I loved the demos of Cornerstone, but it was twice the price, so I could not justify it. We've done fine with Taleo, but everything is more difficult than it should be, in my opinion. What I have seen of Saba is pretty impressive, as well. I recently uploaded one of my SCORM courses to a Saba LMS and it was so much easier than what I had to learn to do in Learn/Taleo/Oracle.
I also love what I see higher ed moving to; the newest Blackboard version is impressive, but I don't think it will do the reporting and all the other things we need a corporate LMS to do, yet I have not investigated that. I wish I had, actually. I have no experience with AO, but that idea is intriguing.
We are currently using Absorb, and are currently looking to replace it. Let me know if you want some insight in to the systems pros and cons.
In our search for a new LMS we have looked at
SumTotal - rather robust, and nice features
Taleo/Learn - again robust, but we felt very coumbersome and not easy to use
Cornerstone - so far our top choice, very user friendly, easy to customize and plenty of features
Saba - we are demoing next week
We just signed with Cornerstone. Leaving EKP/NetDimensions.
Our top two choices were between Cornerstone and Saba. We felt that both were excellent prodcuts and fairly equal in all major features. We have a need for using the exam/testing engine that comes as part of the LMS and doen't rely on the elearning authoring tool. Cornerstone had the clear advantage on this one point. Also, Cornerstone price was better. But it was a very close decision between the two.
Hey guys - I am just launching a new Absorb LMS, would love to be involved with any discussion on pro's/con's and anything else which could help. Am also willing to give my honest opinions too!
MIke - Here is what I have learned as the LMS admin for our Absorb system. Of course my pros and cons may not be the same for you
Pros:
Very easy implementation
Learner side pretty simple to use and navigate, also customizable
Can add custom certificates to courses
Learners can only enroll in one session of a course - so they cannot hold seats in mutliple sessions of the same class
Can schedule reports to run and have emailed to anyone
SCORM and AICC compliant
Can create basic quizzes and surveys within system
Dicsussion boards - but very limited
Cons:
Reporting - isn't as comprehensive or easy to pull data, can only use their out fo the can reporting
Doesn't track absent or cancellations
Learners can only enroll in one session - meaning if they do want to repeat a course for such things as remediation they can't enroll; the admin has to do a lot of workaround
Customer serivce/tech support - no onsight support during implementation or training
Many of the features do not work intuitively and you have to find ways to manilpulate them: autoenrollment doesn't put people in to actual specific sessions; not easy to set up organization hierarchy
While there are a lot of really great features and they are always doing updates to these, the reporting is really one of the areas that isn't acceptable for us. I have to often use three different reports from them to be able to pull the data I need and still have to then manipulate it in excel. We have also had quite a bit of technical challenges that are taking significant time to get resolved.
We only implemented this system in October 2011 and I already want something else. I was not part of the decision team to bring this on as I was hired just after they did the contract, so I believe that we may have gone a different route if I were on board sooner. No one on my team has significant experience with and LMS as they did not have one prior to this. Right now we are looking to integrate systems with our sister organizations so that is really the only reason I can contemplate a new LMS.
My company is going through the RFP (request for purchase) process of purchasing a new LMS. Management would like to explore Moodle before we move any further. I do not have a lot of experience with Moodle, and was wondering if anybody could help.
I have attached my organization’s mandatory requirements. If anyone has any comments to whether Moodle can do these would be great.
Great suggestion. We currently have ForceTen but are in the process of looking into adapting a new LMS. Would you mind sharing what 17 LMS you vetted and what their price ranges were? Also, what where your requirements that TaleoLearn was able to meet?
It's been couple of years now, and the players have changed a lot (not that I could remember them all anyway), but we looked at vendors like IBM, Sumtotal, Saba, Plateau, and, of course, Learn.com along with some others that were smaller or more specialized like PureSafety. We looked at vendors we already had other business accounts with and those in the Gartner magic quadrant at the time.
We started with over 400 requirements and boiled them down to ask for demos on the top 75-80 tasks that would best showcase the system's ability to meet our need. We had each vendor demo those tasks in the same order for the afected users and asked the users to rate what they saw 1-5 on 2 dimensions:
1) How important is this to me and 2) how well did this vendor perform
I won't subject you to the full list, but here are the user groups we identified and a sampling of what we asked them to do for each.
Importance
Rating
Role
Functionality / Scenario
Please Rate 1-5
Please Rate 1-5
1 = Of some interest
1 = Unsatisfactory
5 = Necessary
5 = Superior
End User
Demonstrate the self-enrollment process
Log in as a new user of the system / as a temporary service provider / as an existing user of the system
Go to the help menu
Follow the steps in the event the end user needs to ask a question
Demonstrate how a user would reset his/her password
Manager/Supervisor
Enroll an employee in a specific course
Enroll a group of employees in a specific course
Approve/Deny request for an employee's enrollment in a class.
Registrar
Assign a course to a group of employees in a specific job category
Track an employee's course completion
Run a "gap analysis" report showing all employees who have unmet requirements.
A training session is assigned to all employees. One week later, 120 new employees are hired. Demonstrate how they would be enrolled (if not automatic)
Administrator
Set up an email notification/escalation process when a course is scheduled, when a course is overdue, when a course is failed
Design a report to view course completion by different variables, such as company-wide, location, job title, etc.
Set up a learning plan for all employees in a specific job title (e.g. Analysts must have met requirements for Excel, Access, etc.)
Course Developer
Upload an existing PowerPoint presentation and a word document (content to be provided prior to demo .Make edits to it such as deleting/adding slides and adding T/F question within presentation.)
Upload AICC/SCORM courseware and customize.
"Publish" the course to the system.
Set the criteria for successful completion of a course.
Marta, sounds like you and I are on the same mission .. to replace Taleo. I have not heard of Torch but I'll research it. I've checked on several others that look promising i.e. Absorb, Meridian, KnowledgePresenter. My goal is to find something that's user friendly even if the cost is greater. Have you considered Articulate Online?
Hi Mike - I'm interested to know why Taleo is being replaced in your org. I'm a Taleo Admin, and have some qualms about the system, but would love to know what pushed you over the edge to saying "no more".
Marty, well done! I created a substantial RFP, but in the demos I let vendors drive when I should have asked them to perform these items for us...the ones on your list. Had we done that, we would have seen more of the clunkiness of our chosen LMS vendor. It gets overwhelming without this kind of focus. Nice!
Marta, sounds like you and I are on the same mission .. to replace Taleo. I have not heard of Torch but I'll research it. I've checked on several others that look promising i.e. Absorb, Meridian, KnowledgePresenter. My goal is to find something that's user friendly even if the cost is greater. Have you considered Articulate Online?
I have thought about Articulate Online, but haven't looked at it yet. It is on the list of LMS that we should look at. I've seen the posts for Absorb, Meridian and all the other ones mentioned here. I just don't want a list of 400. I think that looking at, maybe the top 10 (or less), should suffice. But, there are so many I have no clude which would even make the top 10. I know that I can exclude many based on cost alone because I know we will not spend more than we're spending now and actually we will want to reduce our cost. So, that will eliminate quite a few from the list. I also know that if it's not EASY, EASY, EASY, to administer I want nothing to do with it. And, the catch in my pocket is that I am a former programmer that went into training so when I say EASY I mean EASY. I'm a single-trainer shop and I don't have time to play.
Anna, I would have to say it's because Taleo is not at all user friendly on the admin side. Our company went to great pains to make our in house system as intuitive and user friendly as possible and it paid off .. many of our end users have already figured it out before we have a training webinar. User manuals are easier to write because they are shorter and tech support calls are reduced. That said, I'm spoiled. I can't comprehend why anyone would develop an application that requires learning proprietary language, 200 page user manuals (2 of them) and online training that seems to drag on and on. I'm sure they're very proud of their "University" style training but it's too much .. speaking for myself .. I don't have the time to invest in reading material THEN signing up for SEVERAL classes and then trying to keep track of it all on there (in my opinion) very complex website. Their website is so complex that they suggest you take a class to learn how to use it ... what does that tell you. In addition, I have not been at all impressed with Taleo's up front tech support inasmuch as I've never gotten the right answer and usually end up pouring through the manuals to figure it out. It's one of those things where you try so many different things as a workaround that when you get the result you want you can't remember which one worked. Reporting is always a challenge and that's all I'll say about it. Taleo is probably a good product for a company that has a dedicated person or people to work with it every day and learn its quirks but for us we need to hit the ground running and have no time for a huge learning curve every time we want to use it.
We use Plateau v6.2. By looking at the replies so far, I don't see anyone else who uses Plateau. Does anyone have any comments about this LMS? Has anyone encountered any problems with Articulate interfacing well with this tool? So far, it seems to work OK, but we still have problems with the Attachment and Exit links working well once it has been published to Plateau.
Hi Evie, we are currently using Plateau v6.2 (will soon be upgrading to v6.4)and have recently began using Articulate. Can you advise me of any issues you may have experienced publishing Articulate courses in Plateau v6.2? Have you experienced any issues with course completions? Thank you in advance.
301 Replies
Hello All,
I found a feature within Absorb that I can't do without. What is the pricing structure they have in place for this LMS? I can't seem to find this without entering my details for a sales call.
Cheers,
Dave
ooh what's the feature?!!
Shopping cart.....
I currently use Moodle and also the ability to have people buy online and have their log on details sent to them automatically. It's a must have for us!
Cheers,
Dave
I am also working with Docebo and like it a lot, it seems to work well with Articulate which is even better!
Thomas
We've been using Educadium's EasyCampus. I was wondering if any of you had an opinion on this LMS, I don't have a lot of experience with it yet and I'm not sure how it stands up compared to Moodle. If anyone has used it before, I'd love to hear what you think of it compared to other LMSs.
Hi Dave - hope you are well?
Just dropped you a line in the email re Absorb. We can talk about the shopping cart details also.
Cheers,
Stephen
We use SkillSoft. If you threw your custom courses down the toilet and caught what came out the other end, you'd have something better than SkillSoft.
But to be fair, SkillSoft should be considered more of a content developer than an LMS developer. Their content comes first and is unmatched by any other company I've seen.
Inquisiq R3: http://www.inquisiqr3.com/
It was literally the only system that suited our needs within our budget (v. affordable compared to other LMSs on the market, great for a non-profit/academic org like ours). Pros, off the top of my head:
- Our learning management system is open to the public. Inquisiq was the only system we found that natively handled self registration and enrollment, with a registration form that was fully customizable. Most other LMSs were primarily suited for pre-enrolled learners. That said, it can handle pre-enrollments and user grouping pretty well also.
- It was the most user friendly, easy to use and navigate, intuitive interface we came across. A lot of our learners are older/not very tech-savvy and we rarely get questions about navigating the system.
- SCORM 1.2 and 2004 compatible
- Searchable course catalog, with options to create multiple sub catalogs or custom/private course catalogs
- Extensive reporting capabilities that are highly customizable
- Easy certificate generation
- e-Commerce functionality
- A lot of customization possible wrt graphics, look and feel etc.
- Can be used to deploy e-learning modules as well as schedule classroom sessions etc.
- Decent support, pretty quick with e-mail responses to tech support queries
Lots of good feedback here about LMS's. I find it interesting that there are few to none who have mentioned using Articulate Online (AO) and I was hoping to hear more about AO. We are still searching for a user friendly LMS to replace Taleo and my original thought was to consider AO so we could have a "one stop shop" for design with Articulate/Storyline and publish directly to AO. As I search the community for AO comments, there doesn't seem to be much out there and what I do see is a lot of " sorry that feature isn't available now but you can submit a request ...." Which prompts me to ask the moderators " Is there a new version/update/replacement in the works for Articulate Online? and if so, how close are you to rolling it out? I'm keeping an open mind and researching other solutions but I would still prefer a one stop shop with 100% Articulate product support.
So has anyone looked at Torch LMS from Prometheus? We are starting our search for a new LMS to replace Taleo. I am currently going back through the documents that were used when Taleo was chosen 3 years ago (when it was Learn.com). I am creating a document that will list our needs and then start looking at what's out there (and there seems to be 100's out there). I've created a list of what's been mentioned here, but noticed that Torch LMS hasn't been mentioned. Just curious if anyone has used it. Thanks.
Marta, sounds like you and I are on the same mission .. to replace Taleo. I have not heard of Torch but I'll research it. I've checked on several others that look promising i.e. Absorb, Meridian, KnowledgePresenter. My goal is to find something that's user friendly even if the cost is greater. Have you considered Articulate Online?
Mike -
We are currently using Absorb, and are currently looking to replace it. Let me know if you want some insight in to the systems pros and cons.
In our search for a new LMS we have looked at
I haven't run any demos of Absorb but I would most certainly appreciate hearing your opinion of Absorb (pros and cons). We have been with Taleo, formerly Learn.com and now Oracle for several years and want to move to something that is user friendly. I have more to say about Taleo but I'm not comfortable sharing my opinions of it on the community. If you would like to know more feel free to email me.
As a Taleo/Learn/(now) Oracle LMS content admin, I can agree with what's been posted. It IS cumbersome, and what's worse, the support/training is bad. I loved the demos of Cornerstone, but it was twice the price, so I could not justify it. We've done fine with Taleo, but everything is more difficult than it should be, in my opinion. What I have seen of Saba is pretty impressive, as well. I recently uploaded one of my SCORM courses to a Saba LMS and it was so much easier than what I had to learn to do in Learn/Taleo/Oracle.
I also love what I see higher ed moving to; the newest Blackboard version is impressive, but I don't think it will do the reporting and all the other things we need a corporate LMS to do, yet I have not investigated that. I wish I had, actually. I have no experience with AO, but that idea is intriguing.
We just signed with Cornerstone. Leaving EKP/NetDimensions.
Our top two choices were between Cornerstone and Saba. We felt that both were excellent prodcuts and fairly equal in all major features. We have a need for using the exam/testing engine that comes as part of the LMS and doen't rely on the elearning authoring tool. Cornerstone had the clear advantage on this one point. Also, Cornerstone price was better. But it was a very close decision between the two.
Hey guys - I am just launching a new Absorb LMS, would love to be involved with any discussion on pro's/con's and anything else which could help. Am also willing to give my honest opinions too!
MIke - Here is what I have learned as the LMS admin for our Absorb system. Of course my pros and cons may not be the same for you
Pros:
Cons:
While there are a lot of really great features and they are always doing updates to these, the reporting is really one of the areas that isn't acceptable for us. I have to often use three different reports from them to be able to pull the data I need and still have to then manipulate it in excel. We have also had quite a bit of technical challenges that are taking significant time to get resolved.
We only implemented this system in October 2011 and I already want something else. I was not part of the decision team to bring this on as I was hired just after they did the contract, so I believe that we may have gone a different route if I were on board sooner. No one on my team has significant experience with and LMS as they did not have one prior to this. Right now we are looking to integrate systems with our sister organizations so that is really the only reason I can contemplate a new LMS.
Hello everyone,
My company is going through the RFP (request for purchase) process of purchasing a new LMS. Management would like to explore Moodle before we move any further. I do not have a lot of experience with Moodle, and was wondering if anybody could help.
I have attached my organization’s mandatory requirements. If anyone has any comments to whether Moodle can do these would be great.
Thank you in advance.
It's been couple of years now, and the players have changed a lot (not that I could remember them all anyway), but we looked at vendors like IBM, Sumtotal, Saba, Plateau, and, of course, Learn.com along with some others that were smaller or more specialized like PureSafety. We looked at vendors we already had other business accounts with and those in the Gartner magic quadrant at the time.
We started with over 400 requirements and boiled them down to ask for demos on the top 75-80 tasks that would best showcase the system's ability to meet our need. We had each vendor demo those tasks in the same order for the afected users and asked the users to rate what they saw 1-5 on 2 dimensions:
1) How important is this to me and 2) how well did this vendor perform
I won't subject you to the full list, but here are the user groups we identified and a sampling of what we asked them to do for each.
Marty, well done! I created a substantial RFP, but in the demos I let vendors drive when I should have asked them to perform these items for us...the ones on your list. Had we done that, we would have seen more of the clunkiness of our chosen LMS vendor. It gets overwhelming without this kind of focus. Nice!
I have thought about Articulate Online, but haven't looked at it yet. It is on the list of LMS that we should look at. I've seen the posts for Absorb, Meridian and all the other ones mentioned here. I just don't want a list of 400. I think that looking at, maybe the top 10 (or less), should suffice. But, there are so many I have no clude which would even make the top 10. I know that I can exclude many based on cost alone because I know we will not spend more than we're spending now and actually we will want to reduce our cost. So, that will eliminate quite a few from the list. I also know that if it's not EASY, EASY, EASY, to administer I want nothing to do with it. And, the catch in my pocket is that I am a former programmer that went into training so when I say EASY I mean EASY. I'm a single-trainer shop and I don't have time to play.
Anna, I would have to say it's because Taleo is not at all user friendly on the admin side. Our company went to great pains to make our in house system as intuitive and user friendly as possible and it paid off .. many of our end users have already figured it out before we have a training webinar. User manuals are easier to write because they are shorter and tech support calls are reduced. That said, I'm spoiled. I can't comprehend why anyone would develop an application that requires learning proprietary language, 200 page user manuals (2 of them) and online training that seems to drag on and on. I'm sure they're very proud of their "University" style training but it's too much .. speaking for myself .. I don't have the time to invest in reading material THEN signing up for SEVERAL classes and then trying to keep track of it all on there (in my opinion) very complex website. Their website is so complex that they suggest you take a class to learn how to use it ... what does that tell you. In addition, I have not been at all impressed with Taleo's up front tech support inasmuch as I've never gotten the right answer and usually end up pouring through the manuals to figure it out. It's one of those things where you try so many different things as a workaround that when you get the result you want you can't remember which one worked. Reporting is always a challenge and that's all I'll say about it. Taleo is probably a good product for a company that has a dedicated person or people to work with it every day and learn its quirks but for us we need to hit the ground running and have no time for a huge learning curve every time we want to use it.