Codecademy from Skillsoft vs. Halogen TalentSpace (discontinued)

Codecademy from Skillsoft is well suited to persons who wish to quickly acquire practical knowledge and skills that can be immediately applied to support their work or project. On the other hand, Codecademy from Skillsoft is probably not appropriate for those looking for a more theoretical approach to the subject matter.

Incentivized

I think it's a good platform for tracking and monitoring goals, feedback, and development. We don't use the 1:1 meeting feature, however, I can see how that would be valuable for many organizations. I do like that it is very customizable, however, that also presents problems in that sometimes forms and/or processes can be a bit challenging to create easily and quickly.

• The content is relevant to our projects, and therefore adds value to our goals.
• The content is delivered in a way that is conducive to adult learning, e.g., chunked into bite-size amounts (not overwhelming), uses language that is easy to understand (no technical jargon), a good mix of didactic content and quizzes (the latter adds an element of interaction).
• The user interface is logical and user-friendly.
• Codecademy from Skillsoft makes it easy to track your progress, not only within a course, but also relative to your weekly target.

Incentivized

• 1:1 agendas are easy to create, add comments to and prompt excellent conversation flow on the topics that truly matter to the manager and the employee.
• The system can be easily customized to reflect your company's language and culture. We did this in several areas of the platform (goals, development, learning), and it made a world of difference in the understanding and adaptation of our users. One example is that in each learning module, we added 3 questions in the course description so that managers would be automatically prompted to ask to follow up / learning transfer questions when their employees enroll and take a learning course.
• Halogen support is outstanding. Any question I have had has been answered upon the first contact or within 24 hours.

Incentivized

• Price too high, students cannot pay 150 euro per year
• There should be a way to pay for a single class, my student only cares about Java

Incentivized

• My organization does not use all of the functions/modules that Halogen offers, but I find that those modules still appear on the Halogen main page. I think a great area for improvement is to hide these functions so as not to confuse employees.

Incentivized

Implementing a new system and process company wide is never an easy task. We moved so quickly in such a short period of time that we were able to learn quickly but also have the opportunity to improve the Halogen experience. We will more than likely will renew our use of Halogen as we already are seeing a small impact which hopefully in the long run will lead to a greater impact

Incentivized

Halogen is very intuitive and provides very clean work-space ... lots of white space and modern layouts. There is more than one way to accomplish your action, too!

We only purchased the appraisal module and without the other modules offered, you are really limited in what you can do and the process becomes much more involved with needing to maintain information across multiple platforms. We found that they charge for everything and call it "consulting." We poured so much money and time into a system that was just overkill for what we really needed.

Incentivized

It is very easy to use and I can do my own programming instead of paying a technician and waiting sometimes days for them to program the changes.

Get to know your CAM - Customer Account Manager! They are a lifesaver! (Thanks Jorie Basque!)

Codecademy from Skillsoft is the most technically advanced platform to use for personal as well as your professional life.

Incentivized

I have used other systems in the past and I like that Halogen provides everything in one space. I would like to see a more developed way to report training, not in the LMS, but I think that for the most part that Halogen is a robust system that is superior to its competition.

Incentivized

• Having improved our proficiency in web development and web design through Codecademy from Skillsoft , we are able to deploy new websites or update existing ones more quickly and efficiently.
• The courses in cybersecurity have enhanced our skills in protecting our business against malicious online threats. The benefits of keeping our data secure online is immeasurable.
• The courses in UI and UX design have given us a framework on which to design effective and user-centric websites in a consistent manner.

Incentivized

• We are able to get our reviews done in a quicker amount of time. Instead of 4-8 weeks we were able to get it done under a month.
• Halogen has gotten better at given us a heads up when the system will be down. Most patches are done overnight so we can at least verify it was done, but their success rate of a patch not breaking something is not at 99%. So we do lose productivity when the system is down.
• The tool is easier to do so there are fewer questions from users outside the core team.

Incentivized