Cengage WebAssign vs. Mongoose vs. RedShelf

Cengage WebAssign is similar to other online textbook softwares I've used while teaching accounting online. It's a stable platform and seems easy for students to use, even if they are not extremely computer savvy.

Incentivized

At our college, the admissions team also uses Cadence. I think it's particularly useful for back-and-forth interactions in real time (or through an AI chatbot) My department focuses only on donors and alums. These communications are much less likely to be back-and-forth. They're more informational in nature which makes some of the features un-necessary. It's easy for a recipient to opt-out, but not easy to set up scenarios where they can opt out of specific types of texts - all-or-nothing is more likely and it's difficult for them to re-subscribe once they've opted out.

Incentivized

RedShelf has been great in a higher ed environment to help connect students to textbook and publisher materials. It has helped make the process of purchasing/accessing those materials so much easier for students. I am at an institution now where we don't have RedShelf, and the faculty and students are regularly frustrated with this process, so I'll be looking to get us a license here soon. RedShelf is particularly useful if instructors are using various different types of materials from different publishers. However, if an institution was only using Cengage Unlimited for example (that is a service where students will just pay for access to that site and all the books/materials for all of their courses would be accessible on there), that would be a time where I would think RedShelf wouldn't provide you with as much benefit. That being said, we may be using RedShelf in a very specific manner, and it may be able to provide us more ability/features that we haven't taken full advantage of.

Incentivized

• easy to set up segments in order to reach certain portions of the audience
• easy opt-out for recipients
• simple reporting after texts are sent

Incentivized

• Provides access with or without internet connection to read your books.
• You can access the application from your mobile device, tablets, or desktop computers.
• Streamlines the distribution of e-books, e-textbooks, and other digital content.

Incentivized

• There is built-in connection with Raiser's Edge NXT but the field mapping is overly complicated and setting it up requires action both on customer end and Cadence end
• Cannot update a bad email address without deleting the record and re-importing it
• Cannot simply add records - must be done through import from a spreadsheet
• assigning a record to a user can only be done during initial import

Incentivized

• Waiting for a course management tool to streamline the process. It's in the works and a tall order since all clients approach the process differently.
• A little bit of a stumble with a recent software rollout for day one access roll out, but at least it was intuitive to work through

Incentivized

I think all of these softwares are fairly similar in set up and ease of use. I am provided Cengage WebAssign with my pre-built SNHU courses.

Incentivized

We are currently evaluating Mailchimp's SMS option to see if the price for adding that feature is less than what we are paying for Cadence. Currently we are ONLY using Mailchimp for email communications, but the interface is much more user friendly. We have not yet had a chance to demo the SMS feature to compare it to Cadence, but we plan to check it out.

Incentivized

I don't believe I'd used many products that are similar to RedShelf.

Incentivized

• Too early (one year) to have hard ROI info, but we have had constituents who have indicated a preference for text as their primary means of interacting with our organization.
• Even with the integration with Raiser's Edge NXT it takes time to update the database with opt-outs.
• We have fewer constituents with mobile numbers than those with email addresses. We will have to appeal to our constituents to share mobile numbers with us

Incentivized

• It is a great provider of affordable digital learning materials that help improve teaching and learning through technology.

Incentivized