Which LMS do you use and why?

We have just acquired an LMS after not having anything.  They chose Absorb, which someone mentioned previously.  The cost really waan't all that much, but we are not hosting it ourselves, so that might be why.  While there are may great things about Absorb, such as very user friendly, there are still some major challenges.  There is no consistant and easy way to track absents ro now shows and studnets cannot un-enroll them selves from a course.  Granted so far, those have been our biggest issues and when you take that into consideration, that isn't bad.  I can say their support tema is pretty good, they have been listening to our needs and really trying to help us find ways to fix any issues.

As someone also siad, there isn't a perfect one out there, but if it comes along I will definitely be willing to check it out.  In most cases I do find it is really how the course itself works with the system.  Lately I have found that the authoring software doesn't always work the same way with different LMS.

We vetted about 17 license-based systems and ultimately settled on Learn.com (now Taleo Learn).

Our search was complicated by the fact that we had approximately 13 functional areas that each had a stake in the LMS and, as you said, different needs.

We broke our requirements down into "Must haves", "should haves", and "nice to haves" and rated each system on how well it met the identified needs.

Since we were looking at a commercial solution, we had several vendors come in for demo sessions. We gave each vendor a script that included the things that we were most interested in seeing (our "must haves") and asked them not just to tell us whether it could be done on the system, but to show us HOW to do it on the system. From our initial vendor responses to our checklist, you'd have thought that each system did everything. By asking to see the process, we were able to weed out some systems that would have made our day-to-day overly cumbersome.

So my advice - Get a reasonable idea of how you want your process to flow and then do a "show me, don't tell me" review.

Hey Marty,

Thanks for dipping in on this.  Your post made me think a bit.....I like you approach and idea!

Based on YOUR criteria then, what were your top three? 

Cheers mate,

Dave

You're asking me to dip into the ancient past here, but as I recall, the top three were Learn.com, Plateau, and SABA. Technology is always changing, though, so it may be a different landscape today.

We were required to exclude any open source products, so I can't speak to where any of those would have fallen in.

Extending the "show me" concept to the open source tools, you may not have a sales person to demo the functionality, but a search for "how do you ______ in Moodle/etc." would likely give you the community-based equivalent.

You should not base your choice just on opinions of others. You are most likely trying to identify software that will be used in your company over next couple years. Consider performing a proper evaluation to make the right choice.

We approached this by creating a matrix of desired functionalities we would expect from out LMS of choice, i.e. requirements in terms of customizability, user management, compatibility with our existing content, etc. Next steps were to give weights to these various requirements and score a number of promising LMSes on the market.

One of the key factors I would consider is an Open Source. Although some of the closed-source commercial products still offer a lot of additional functionalities not present in OS, you gain flexibility to tailor the system to your specific needs. You also have a chance to expand it without waiting for mercy from a commercial vendor.

After thorough comparison we have chosen to go with ILIAS. It has won mostly for following the standards (no or easy to troubleshoot problems with SCORM), decent functionality and very good clean, object oriented code. Also unlike Moodle, it is a very controlled project with clear division of responsibility between the parties involved in its development.

Hi Dave

Agree with your points about Moodle and in a similar position with some of our clients. We've used Articulate online for some other clients. Keep posting about your progress.

We are using Enterprise Knowledge Platform (EKP), it offers support for either SCORM and AICC as well as HTML. It offers a complete quiz possibility and loads of extras. It's not free or open source but it's very complete.

@Eric- we are currently implementing SF. Would you be willing to let me pick your brain? 

Hello Dave,

I have been using an LMS Kallidus since 2007. It works very well with articulate out puts.  Kallidus is supplied by a UK based company e2train. This LMS is configurable so no need for extensive customisation. It has the full functionality that you will expect from any leading  LMS. We have 35,000 users on it with domain functionality so you have a lot of control without getting your IT department  or technical whizkids involved. Support from the supplier is first class. Reporting is also very good. Visit www.e2train.com for more information. Good luck with your sreach. A lot has to be considered before selecting an LMS. I implemented this in my organisation and the main reason for picking this was that it was easily configurable supported scorm 1.2 and 2004 as well and  a whole host of other multimedia solutions. I looked at moodle, Saba and a fews others before settling for this. The cost was competitve.