MindTap is an eLearning course management solution from Cengage, a digital learning content and technology provider. For educators, it includes pre-made interactive course materials (such as homework assignments, assessments, etc.), analytics around student engagement and performance, and the ability to customize courses. For students, MindTap offers a mobile app to access eBooks, flashcards, quizzes, grades, and due date reminders.
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PeopleAdmin Higher Ed Platform, from Powerschool
Score 7.0 out of 10
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The PeopleAdmin Higher Ed Platform is a talent management platform designed for Higher Education and Government organizations, now from PowerSchool (acquired August, 2018). Modules include analytics, applicant tracking, position management, onboarding, records management, and performance management.
We started using the application optimally at the beginning as a digital learning and consultation platform. In it we imported all kinds of bibliographic material so that students could access them with the ease of a tap. The application is perfect for those instructors who are not beginners in HTML. In that case, the application very practically allows them to create a complete course in the shortest possible time because it has a state-of-the-art instructional design. It was excellent for unifying all the basic course plans between teachers teaching the same subject, giving the advantage that all courses at the same level would have exactly the same information and nothing would be overlooked
Organizations who have very few applications and/or very few positions posted are probably less likely to benefit as high from PeopleAdmin. Large organizations who have several positions and/or several applications/applicants can definitely benefit from this product. This product is not as well suited for performance management as I had hoped because there is not a lot of freedom to creating and designing different evaluations for different position types in the system when you have an organization that has thousands of different employees and types.
Applicant tracking was a good use of this tool for our department. I think it could use a few more customization features but overall it was a good tool to weed out applicants who were not qualified for the position.
The system has some canned reporting tools that also worked well for our department and management needs.
It was a great place to house our position descriptions and provided a readily accessible source for hiring managers to make requested updates and changes and for employees to see and have access to their position descriptions.
The biggest issue our first-time users have with Mindtap is that ad/pop-up blockers often stop the tool from opening. (Mindtap typically opens in a new window vs inside the LMS) This leads to a lot of initial frustration amongst the students early in the course.
MindTap lacks a really strong set of roles outside of Instructor and Student. There is no Teaching Assistant role or and IT/Course Builder role. Additionally setting up students workers as TAs in one course while they may be a student in another concurrently has been more than a little cumbersome.
The UI is a bit dated and it doesn't implement many responsive web design features, though this can typically be worked around by downloading the free app.
The mobile app experience is not as strong for Instructors as it is for students.
PeopleAdmin's internal report writer needs work. Currently, in version 7, reporting can only be done requisition number by requisition number. The report writer needs to be modified so it can create reports enterprise-wide.
PeopleAdmin's Data Mart product needs substantial modification. In version 5.8, on a monthly basis, PeopleAdmin provided us with an Microsoft Access database containing our historical data up to that period end. In version 7, the "Data Mart" contains our historical data. The Data Mart consists of over 300 files. These files are not database table downloads nor is it parts of a database data dump. Rather, the files appear to be scrapes from html pages. They contain html codes and other character data that needs to be cleaned before they can be uploaded. The files are not in a table-by-table format. Any one file can contain data from two or more tables. The format of the Data Mart makes it difficult to load the data into a database and format it in a table structure that is comparable to the Access database provided with version 5.8.
It's hard to imagine not renewing it as the professors would not want to go back to the way their courses were previously populated. The only thing that would cause us to change would be in the textbook changed and the new company offered a better tool
We are evaluating our options as it relates to PeopleAdmin. We are likely to renew as we can not find another product that gives us the functionality we have with PeopleAdmin 5.8 in the area of Position Description. Outside of that, we would likely be close to finding another product solution.
MindTap is the only learning software I currently use, but in the past I have used Pearson and McGraw Hill learning content. All of these companies are progresses at a similar rate and making great improvements to their educational materials. MindTap, in my opinion has the best customer service support and representatives in the business. Our rep. has been very responsive.
I've used both Target Recruit and HR Smart. When working with Target Recruit it quickly became apparent it was not the right solution for us. Another solution we examined prior to selection PeopleAdmin was iCIMS. iCIMS is a very social system but was not as familiar with the Higher Education recruitment processes as was PeopleAdmin.
The positive impact is to help students practice statistics to solve business problems.
The negative side is that the pricing might be too high compared to other free options available, even though the free options might not have the same features MindTap has.
