Announcing the Education Software Honor Roll

In honor of Teachers Appreciation Day, we are proud to announce the first-ever TrustRadius Education Software Honor Roll! Based on reviews by education industry professionals, we’ve identified the A+ software that educators use far and wide.

More than ever, technology and education go hand-in-hand. The market for hardware and software in education has grown to over $8 billion. But that spending is not just for ed tech like learning management systems (LMS). All kinds of technology can help improve education, from web conferencing to collaboration tools.

The Education Software Honor Roll recognizes the top 10 most reviewed products by education industry professionals. Winners come from a range of categories – note that only 3 winners are education-specific software, represented by pink bars on the graph below. But each of these products adds value everyday for people who work in the education sector. So without further ado…

Here are the Education Software Honor Roll winners:

EMS Software

EMS Software, recently acquired by Accruent, is an enterprise-level event management and scheduling platform that also includes class and resource scheduling capabilities. While it may not seem like it at first glance, this product is well-suited for use in the education industry and offers an academic-specific solution. EMS Software’s academic campus scheduling module includes features such as:

• creation and optimization of course scheduling scenarios
• course scheduling based on attributes (e.g. required room size, equipment needs, accessibility, location)
• the ability for course instructors to input their location and time preferences
• final exam scheduling
• academic scheduling report generation
• integration with third-party student integration systems (SIS) and event software.

Education Industry professionals on TrustRadius love the ability to visualize all room bookings, create custom reports, set up recurring room bookings, and overall user friendliness of the EMS Software platform.

“EMS Software is used by our campus to manage most academic spaces and other event spaces. We use it as a risk management tool as well as to avoid event conflicts with classes. It has enabled us to be prepared for multiple large events on campus as well as to mitigate anyone who is advertising an event on campus without reserving the space.”

– Verified User | Administrative Assistant | Higher Education Company

Schoology  

A classic learning management system (LMS), it’s no wonder that Schoology is one of the most reviewed products by education industry professionals. Focused on serving primary and secondary education institutions, Schoology provides schools with a comprehensive K-12 learning student performance management system. It includes:

• a course and lesson builder,
• the ability to embed media in courses,
• online grading and annotation tools,
• the ability to track student performance with course analytics,
• built-in collaboration tools,
• assessment creation and management,
• and mobile device compatibility.

Educators on TrustRadius value Schoology for its virtual classroom capabilities that enable absent students to access materials at home, a gradebook to communicate announcements throughout the whole learning community, and useful integrations with third-party applications such as Google Drive, Google Forms, and Flipgrid.

“Schoology is used across my district in all schools from k-12th grade. Teachers across the district use this to address equity and student choice. They also have student groups to foster communication between admin/counselors and their students, and for clubs & Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) to share resources!”

– Arcadia Parson | Teacher | Virginia Beach City Public Schools

Entrinsik Informer

Informer 5 from Entrinsik is primarily a business intelligence and data analytics tool. However, it does offer a data analysis solution specifically for higher education institutions. Informer provides colleges and universities with real-time data about student metrics such as academic progress, enrollment rates, and demographics. The product can also help administrators and financial personnel keep track of budget resources, general ledger accounts, procurement to payment, capital projects, fixed assets, and alumni relations. Higher education industry reviewers on TrustRadius frequently highlight Entrinsik Informer’s detailed reporting, its ability to view query results in multiple formats, and its LiveExcel feature that enables users to get results faster.

“The scheduling functionality allows different departments and users to plan ahead for their needs and either export or email the results. Scheduled reports comes in very handy when you need to export the data to third party companies or to a network location for batch processing. This allows us to provide current data with much more frequency.”

– Michael Harlow | Systems Specialist | College of the Desert

Qualtrics  

Recently acquired by SAP, Qualtrics is a survey design and data collection platform that enables organizations across a variety of industries to collect and interpret data from targeted sources. Qualtrics offers a solution specifically designed for higher education institutions and K-12 schools to conduct student- and faculty-led research. This includes classroom research, survey and experiment design, and longitudinal analysis. The platform can also collect campus insights like student engagement and case management, administer and collect online course evaluations, and track alumni engagement metrics. Education industry professionals on TrustRadius comment that the Qualtrics platform is user friendly, has a wide breadth of features, and has excellent customer support.

“AU Campus Recreation uses Qualtrics to survey our members, our student users, and our student employees. It helps us gauge our successes and needs in allowing us to assess our unit and strategic plan goals, as well as in our student learning outcomes…The support staff is amazing. They take care of issues immediately and are eager to help you succeed.”

– Patsy Davis | Associate Director of Campus Recreation | Augusta University

Canvas

Canvas is another classic learning management system (LMS) designed for both higher education institutions and K-12 schools. With Canvas, students have the ability to create profiles, customize their course notifications, access course materials on mobile devices, and collaborate with fellow students on assignments. Canvas also offers a wide variety of capabilities for school administrators, teachers, and professors including:

• course creation and content editing tools,
• the ability to import courses into Canvas and embed media in course content,
• student performance tracking,
• an integrated calendar and chat features,
• web conferencing tools,
• and open APIs to design custom integrations with other learning tools.

Education industry professionals on TrustRadius appreciate that Canvas is easy for students to use, provides 24/7 access to learning materials, has a mobile application, and has multiple ways for teachers/administrators to communicate with students.

“TCS Education System is a non-profit organization that uses Canvas for all of its five affiliates… For the student, Canvas is also very easy to use and organized well. The Modules listing provides students with an “outline: of the course and helps keep them working in a linear fashion (if that is what you want). There are also direct links to assignments and discussions so students can see all of the specific assignments at once. The grade book is also very easy for students to read and interpret.”

– Mark Labbett | Senior Instructional Designer | TCS Education System

Zoom

Zoom is a web conferencing software with vertical-specific solutions for government administrations, finance, healthcare, and the education industry. Within education, Zoom provides K-12 classrooms and universities with a comprehensive video communications platform. It offers features such as high-quality video and audio calling, content and screen sharing, co-annotation capability, audience polling, breakout ‘zoom rooms’, digital whiteboarding, integration with LMS software (e.g. Blackboard, Canvas, Moodle), and the ability to record courses for students to watch later. Zoom users on TrustRadius that work in the education industry value Zoom’s strong network connection and stability, intuitive user interface, and call recording feature.

“Our organization is located around the globe. Zoom ensures we can communicate effectively across all locations. The video and audio quality is extremely good, even on slower connections. The product is easy to use and intuitive, so our end-users rarely have technical issues other than making sure their correct audio/video input is selected. We also utilize Zoom for distance learning. We have multiple sites set up with Zoom classrooms for teaching/learning.”

– Travis Hunt | LMS Administrator | Upper Iowa University

Airtable

Airtable is a project management tool that allows users to visualize, update, and track project progress in multiple formats. Users can arrange their project progress through a calendar view, a kanban style board, a grid layout, or a gallery view of different project tiles. While Airtable does not offer a solution specifically designed for the education industry, it’s easy to see why teachers, administrators, professors, and even students like this versatile project management tool. A few common use cases for Airtable in the education industry include managing coursework, developing lesson plans, tracking student progress, and as a learning resource repository. Individuals in the education industry on TrustRadius note that Airtable has a clean UI, makes it very easy to categorize and group cells, offers multiple integrations with third-party applications through Zapier, and allows users to easily link records to cells.

“Airtable is used to simplify operations and processes across various departments at SKY School. Two of the primary processes that Airtable takes care of in the school are Admission Process – from walk-in data capture, admission data mapping to student database, database of students availing transport etc… Another process is the Daily Lesson Plan Management, where every week the lesson plans are all systematically collected in one table in Airtable automatically synced with cloud, using Zapier. Digitizing the offline process to a completely online end-to-end solution has saved the organization many man-hours of menial labor.”

– Ashutosh Kumar Buddhiraju | Private Equity Analyst | Education Management Company

Blackbaud Education Management Solutions  

Blackbaud Education Management Solutions, formerly Blackbaud K–12 ON Solutions, is a suite of learning management tools designed for primary and secondary schools. Blackbaud’s suite offering for K-12 schools includes a student information system (SIS), learning management system (LMS), enrollment management software, and a CMS for school websites. This suite of tools enables educators and administrators to:

• manage courses,
• build interactive assignments,
• track and analyze student data, work with either a numerical- or letter-based grading system,
• track student attendance,
• and manage sports teams.

The Blackbaud solution also offers course scheduling and requesting capabilities for students. Education industry professionals on TrustRadius note that the platform’s data management capabilities, attendance tracking features, and ability to send updates and notifications to parents are some of Blackbaud Education Management Solution’s best features.

“Our school uses Blackbaud’s education management solutions system across the majority of our organization. The Blackbaud systems have vastly improved the organization, accessibility, and digitization of our school’s day to day management… Teachers get a digital advisory roster each morning and can individually mark who is present or absent. All of those lists then feed into the greater Attendance list for the day, and the office can then see only the students who were marked as absent and follow up on it.”

– Allison Gross | International Student Coordinator | Glenelg Country School

Jamf Pro

Jamf Pro is an enterprise mobility management (EMM) software that enables users to protect and manage all their devices. The vendor offers an education-specific mobile device management solution for school administrators, teachers, and parents. Jamf Pro for education includes features such as a dashboard to keep track of all devices, an incident system that keeps track of device damage, mass software install and upgrading, location support, and content caching. Education industry professionals on TrustRadius appreciate that Jamf Pro allows them to remotely and quickly install iPad applications, update or install software en masse, and manage the Apple software ecosystem across devices.

“Our district uses Jamf Pro to automate device management of our district provided iOS devices and technology. This includes iPads, iMacs, and Macbook Pro’s. Jamf Pro allows us to work remotely on our technology allowing us more time to get more done. Jamf Pro is the tool we use to provide technical support and software deployment for all our Apple devices. Jamf Pro solves our biggest problem, to many end users and not enough time for me to put my hands on each and every device.”

– Angel Swalve | Systems Administrator/Technology Support Specialist | Killeen Independent School District

Marketo

Marketo is an enterprise-level marketing automation platform from Adobe that offers a solution specifically for higher education institutions. Rather than addressing learning management or student information system needs, Marketo helps colleges and universities attract prospective students, stay connected with alumni, and ultimately increase school revenue. The Marketo platform includes email campaign automation and tracking, account-based marketing across multiple channels, integrations with social media platforms, digital ads, marketing campaign analytics, and web experience personalization capabilities. Education industry professionals on TrustRadius praise Marketo’s email campaign building capabilities, noting that the email templates are easy to use and customize.

“It is a great tool currently used at our organization for admins to customize emails, build workflows and marketing paths to help drive traffic down the funnel. It is mostly used by the marketing department, but we are now trying to leverage it more across the organization and provide visibility to those outside of marketing.”

– Cody Kimball | Machine Learning Engineer | Pluralsight (E-Learning)

Congratulations to all the winners!

Honorable Mentions

Just outside the all-stars of the class, there are a number of other highly-reviewed products by Education professionals that deserve recognition. Each of these products were also highlighted by a number of industry professionals. Here are the honorable mentions and the software categories from which they originate:

• Edmodo LMS
• Google Classroom LMS
• Moodle LMS
• Brightspace LMS
• Raiser’s Edge NXT Nonprofit CRM
• Articulate Storyline Corporate Learning Management System
• Cascade Server Content Management System
• Bluejeans Web Conferencing Software
• Quick Base Low-Code Development Platform
• Beyond Trust Remote Support (formerly Bomgar) Remote Desktop Software
• Hero Student Management System
• Renaissance Accelerated Reader LMS
• Blackboard Learn LMS
• Renaissance Star 360 LMS
• Abila MIP Fund Accounting Accounting & Budgeting Software
• Solarwinds NPM Network Performance Monitoring
• Unitrends Recovery Series Backup Appliance Data Center Backup Software
• JAGGAER (formerly SciQuest) Procurement Software
• Blackboard Collaborate Web Conferencing Software
• Formstack Survey & Forms Building Tools
• Workfront Project Management Software

Honor Roll Criteria

Products included in the 2019 Education Software Honor Roll or Honorable Mention were assessed based on the number of reviews published by education industry professionals. These reviewers must be from the Primary and Secondary Education, Higher Education, Education Management, or E-Learning industries. Reviews written by education professionals in these four industries w comprised 11.2% of all reviews published on TrustRadius this past year.

The top 10 most reviewed products by reviewers in the above industries received the Education Software Honor Roll award. Products that received Honorable Mentions had at least 20 reviews by professionals in the above industries.