Courseplay Cloud Learning vs. DigitalChalk, by Sciolytix vs. Looop

Courseplay was a good tool for delivery professional development training to school district staff over the internet. We were able to get through our annual courses in 2020 and 2021 with little difficulty. I would not use Courseplay for regular or more formal meetings. For our purposes, the cost was pretty minimal.

Incentivized

Digital Chalk is perfect for organizations who are looking for an easy to use Learning Management System and don't need all the bells, whistles, and bulk of the LMS giants, like Cornerstone or SuccessFactors. Digital Chalk doesn't require an administrative specialist to learn a whole new language and environment with endless options and settings. It's very easy to use for both learners and administrators, and yet at the same time provides the exact functions you need.

Incentivized

Looop is very well suited for enterprise-type organizations where there is a diverse set of employees, teams, departments, sub-departments, and lines of business with multiple locations operating in various states and even countries. Looop is affordable when you drill down to cost per user and integrates well with various applications.

Incentivized

• Accessibility on any device.
• Detailed user and activity reports.
• Teaching content online via video.

Incentivized

• While I used the platform, it improved its integrations with PowerPoint, making it easy to convert slides to the DigitalChalk format.
• The editing layers for audio underneath the slides is very user-friendly and easy to use.
• While we didn't use the quiz randomization, I liked how there was a structure built to it so that those who had more robust usage situations than ours would be able to improve engagement and assess learning at a higher level.

Incentivized

• Analytics on training journey of individuals, how many opted, how much attrition, engagement level, etc.
• Detailed automated survey on test taking, course, quality aspects

Incentivized

• APIs only available upon request.
• Does not mesh well with Tableau.
• Android app is not always reliable.

Incentivized

• The administration of Digital Chalk is very easy. The function I think may be missing is an easy way to add revisions and assign them to the students who need them. For example, when you update a piece of a course it would have an indication that it is version xxx and would ask who would like to assign it to - everyone who has taken it before or just new students.
• It would nice to have the system recognize when a student has already completed an element of a course that may be used in another course. For example, if video A is part of courses 1 and 2, and the student already watched it in course 1, it would ask the administrator if they should get automated credit for it in course 2, as well.

Incentivized

• API performance can be improved.
• Customer support.

Incentivized

As I mentioned previously, Digital Chalk's customer support is excellent. I also got a reply back within an hour, and it was usually the same person. So, they were familiar with our needs and how we were using the system. Honestly, most of the time we had to contact their support, it was an issue on the user's side, not in the software. Yet, they still helped identify the issue and consulted on how to fix it.

Incentivized

Courseplay has features that are designed specifically for content-delivery and educational situations. Zoom and other video chat applications don't offer features like gamification or user reports. The cost per user is also relatively low compared to similar services. A higher ownership cost would have probably driven us to make something like Zoom or WebEx work instead.

Incentivized

DigitalChalk gave the organization the hands-on ownership of content creation and delivery while meeting our usage case of hands-off course management on a daily basis and extending the reach of the course content and certificate to as many people as possible. It's easy to use, very cost-effective to implement, and the overall experience means that the course participants get what they need out of the course without a lot of effort on their part.

Incentivized

Looop is much better when it comes on ease of use for users as well as for administrators. So if you company does not have a full-fledged Learning and Developement team, then any HR Generalist can double up as admin with a few click of buttons for the entire company and set up certain metrics and goals and get the employee journey started.

Incentivized

• We were able to deliver training courses in about 80% of the time vs in-person.
• Free trial period allowed us to evaluate without risk.
• Employees with proper training perform better.

Incentivized

• DigtialChalk's ROI is positive - the cost model of low up-front costs to get started, then paying a small amount per course participant means that organizations implementing DigitalChalk as their platform get more than their money's worth from it. It returns profit quickly and on a consistent basis.
• The asynchronous nature of the platform, combined with the targeted usage situation of hands-off course delivery and management, means that resources to create, deliver, and maintain courses can be held with either one person (like an instructional designer) or even an outside contractor. This means that there's little impact to the fixed operating costs involved with hiring someone else to manage it.

Incentivized

• Easier to manage performance tracking.
• Easier to track assigned learning.
• Lots of content to assign with diverse range of subjects.

Incentivized