Cornerstone Galaxy vs. Panopto

Cornerstone Galaxy is a good solution for larger companies that focus on training and want to offer a variety of options to their employees and departments. It is highly customizable. It does require a tech savvy team to set-up, and maintain. This is not a set-it-and-forget-it system. From an LMS perspective, it wouldn't be my top choice for employees who only need a mobile-friendly approach.

Panopto is great if you have a lot of video content that you need to put in a central repository. It makes it easy to manage who sees it and how it is categorized. The captioning features are also really good too. For folks to view the video, they don't need a Panopto account. You can send them a direct link. If you want to upload videos, however, they will need a Panopto account. If you only have a few videos or care less about usage statistics, SharePoint may be a better file repository option

Incentivized

• Ability to provide multiple customizable access roles from general end user to full system admin and anything in between
• Powerful reporting system in the LMS to track a plethora of data points within the platform (user data, training information, transcript information)
• Great options to customize the look and feel of your "home page" to best meet your company's needs and goals.
• Ability to customize the transcript view for learners (i.e. when Completed training will move to their Archived transcript, what to do with Inactive training on transcripts)

Incentivized

• Simple to use - It really is a click-and-go system. Log in, click on record, and you're set.
• Flexible - It allows multiple information-rich inputs to be recorded simultaneously (for example, the screen, webcams, microphones, etc.). For some demonstrations, having multiple perspectives/views can be beneficial. The ability to add multiple webcams enhanced the value of some of my recordings.
• Reliable - This is critical when an unforeseen opportunity arises and you want to capture it visually and with audio. I had multiple experiences where a unique person was available briefly and due to Panopto's reliability, I was able to capture content that would otherwise have been seen by only those physically present at the time.

Incentivized

• Sometimes finding the right answer to your support question can be a bit more difficult than it should be.
• I would like to see more OSHA related courses.
• At times, the administrative interface seems to need to be updated, but the tradeoff honestly might be the absolute rock-solid stability of the platform.

Incentivized

• Panopto doesn't fully support Ultra courses in Blackboard - we can do quizzing, which is very helpful, but we can't do video submissions like an Original course.
• There is no built-in certificate option for completing a video and its quiz questions, which requires us to use additional systems for tracking and awarding.
• Analytics are mediocre. The reporting tools are challenging to use and to get clear information on a consistent basis.
• Quizzing is limited to multiple choice or T/F -- there is no reflection point or open-ended question format.

Incentivized

As long as pricing stays reasonable, we will likely stay with Cornerstone for at least one more contract renewal. It would be a large task to migrate all of our content to a new system. However, the LMS landscape is diversifying with new startups that are showing some real innovation.

Incentivized

Easy to use, easy to learn, lots of support during the learning process. There are a few parts of the system we don't use and I'm hesitant to begin using because other clients have said they're difficult and cumbersome (certifications) or outdated (libraries)

Needs some work, but I'm sure improvements will come over time

Incentivized

I haven't really had any major availability problems. The service is practically impeccable but it is true that at times, due to server and latency problems, the application has been slower. But these have been specific issues that have resolved themselves.

I haven't seen many issues at all with load times. Sometimes learning assignments will take longer then expected but it is still reasonable. They have taken great effort over the last couple years to speed things up like reports and search results so I expect that effort to continue in the coming year.

Incentivized

Its always important to have support when you are facing problems and when you are the main admin of the organization. Cornerstone Support is very supporting when you have not found the answer in the help guide. its very useful to have a team support to guide you.

Incentivized

Panopto has been quick to answer any questions, but their rollouts and updates have caused issues where we felt a little blindsided by unexpected changes. Their development cycle is slow and often their promises for future updates have been extremely slow or never come.

Incentivized

we use also to admin all our training in person events and sessions. Its easy to admin this kind of trainings and automatize some processes we have. Also de user experience and the integration with other systems helps to the employees to use more. All modules integrated oriented to develop people is the principal reason to have CSOD. The training administration is very complete and allows to automate many processes.

The online modules are pretty good. You can access them at any time, which we have done. You learn a lot in the beginning, but having the ability to retake short lessons when you are working on those items was very helpful.

Incentivized

The implementation was pretty difficult. We felt they (Cornerstone) didn’t properly allocate the resources to complete our implementation in the timetable we wanted.

For example, we worked on Workday and SSO integrations - work that we had specifically contracted for in advance. When we were ready to work on that project, they didn’t have the people ready to help us, so it took a lot longer than necessary. That was my biggest pain point.

The implementation approach we went with was a self-led implementation. We would speak to the implementation manager once per week, and self-trained. We met with implementation manager to discuss issues, review things that we’d learned for 1 hour. We found that wasn’t enough. Other things would come up outside that one hour window that we couldn’t get answers to. We didn’t have anyone to ask about those things and we had to wait to ask during our weekly meeting.

The advantage of the self-led implementation approach was that it was really inexpensive – significantly less than the implementation cost for the other systems that we looked at. I also liked that we could pace ourselves. There were however big roadblocks. We would have to make sure the right resources were available. We had an implementation/project manager with a lot of experience and felt that the person was knowledgeable but missed on a few things.

In hindsight, I would still go with the self-led implementation, but knowing what I know now, I would ask for the integration person to be available more. I would work that into the contract. With single sign-on, we needed deep linking to build direct links through a Single Sign-On tool, e.g. when someone gets an email, it directs them to training. But it has to go through SSO to get them to the correct link. Deep linking wasn’t turned on in our system and they had to activate it. We encountered little things like that – sequencing pre-requisites which were problematic. We tried to troubleshoot ourselves.

I recommend you consider contracting for some extra implementation hours and determine when they are going to be available. Work it into the contract that you have the ability to call tech support during implementation. In addition to weekly implementation meetings, they have technical webexes – 4 every week, but 2 didn’t apply to us – one as we were using SSO. The challenge is they were not always relevant – we had specific questions that didn’t fall into those categories

The user experience is a lot better than using SumTotal as an admin CSOD makes working easy. Without having workarounds. Reporting is a lot better than both platforms. Reporting in CSOD is complex however easy to manage and create when you understand the data points collected

Incentivized

Cost wise, unless you have a huge audience, Panopto is better. Both Zoom Meeting and Kaltura and for more expensive and a smaller program/company may not have the demand to justify them. Kaltura - is a far superior tool, the UI is much more modern and easier for a novice user to understand, and it makes sharing videos amongst faculty much easier. The LMS integration if far smoother and the recording is much easier and faster (from within the LMS). The analytics are also present in a much cleaner and digestible way. Lastly, the quizzing feature is far more robust. Zoom - Smoother at streaming and live interactions. Stronger chat feature and supports larger audiences, it can handle over 100 HD webcams at once if needed. It does basic desktop capture and supporting audio-only formats that can easily be converted to Podcast or Soundcloud. Google Loom - This one is not listed above as it's rather new but its a FREE tool for fast video/desktop/PPT recordings and it's extremely fast and easy to share. That said it's pretty basic as far as any additional features are concerned. Post-production editing is limited to basic timeline trimming.

Incentivized

It is important to be familiar with the terms and annual increases in licenses and other aspects of the contract. I recommend analyzing this from the beginning and the permanence is relevant because Cornerstone updates its modules and brings out new features that may allow you to leave a module to acquire another

It's a great product with some pieces that are set but many things that can be customized as needed for individual needs

Incentivized

As I have said before, I have no doubt that the services of the Cornerstone sales people were very good. In particular, our salesperson spent a lot of time in contact with us to make the process go smoothly. Perhaps being a large company in some cases the times were slowed down but it is something normal to take into account.

• We are in the process of trying to increase employee engagement through content expansion. We are in the early stages of this.
• The Edge Import Tool, in conjunction with Reporting 2.0, has done a great job of helping to automate/semi-automate tasks for huge time savings.
• Maintaining compliance. Achieved through dynamic/automated groups, assignments, communication, and reporting.

Incentivized

• Panopto integrates with our LMS, D2L quite well. It makes the process very simple for our instructors and students to record and watch videos.
• It does not require any plugins or software to watch videos, as they load up in a web browser.
• The videos work on mobile and embed easily in courses or on websites.
• We also enjoy the easy sharing of videos and simplified management in the web portal.