Which LMS do you use and why?

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.

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.