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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Ellucian Colleague

    Score7 out of 10
    N/AEllucian offers Colleague educational ERP, including a student information system supporting higher education institutions with student admissions and registration, academics, curriculum management, and other aspects of student management.N/A

    Unique Learning System

    Score8.5 out of 10
    N/AUnique Learning System (ULS) is a special education solution that supports students with disabilities from Pre-K through transition. It provides differentiated, standards-aligned lessons in ELA, math, science, social studies, and life skills with built-in assessments, progress tracking, and automated differentiation.N/A
    Pricing
    Ellucian ColleagueUnique Learning System
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Ellucian ColleagueUnique Learning System
    Free Trial
    NoYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoYes
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Ellucian ColleagueUnique Learning System
    Considered Both Products
    Ellucian
    No answer on this topic
    Everway (formerly Texthelp and n2y)
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    100%
    Would buy again
    6 Answers
    97%
    Would buy again
    299 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    6 Answers
    94%
    Delivers good value for the price
    188 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    6 Answers
    94%
    Happy with the feature set
    292 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    5 Answers
    94%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    97 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    5 Answers
    89%
    Implementation went as expected
    178 Answers
    Features
    Ellucian ColleagueUnique Learning System
    Student and Faculty Administration
    Comparison of Student and Faculty Administration features of Ellucian Colleague and Unique Learning System
    Feature
    Ellucian Colleague
    7.8
    4 Ratings
    6% below category average
    Unique Learning System
    -
    Ratings
    Integrations with 3rd-Party Education Technology7.74 Ratings00 Ratings
    Online Registration Management7.33 Ratings00 Ratings
    District Communications, such as messaging and alerting7.03 Ratings00 Ratings
    Roster Management8.03 Ratings00 Ratings
    Platform Customization8.04 Ratings00 Ratings
    Teacher Self-Service8.03 Ratings00 Ratings
    Student Data Security8.04 Ratings00 Ratings
    Community Support7.73 Ratings00 Ratings
    Class Scheduling8.04 Ratings00 Ratings
    State and National-level Reporting8.04 Ratings00 Ratings
    Compliance Support8.04 Ratings00 Ratings
    Teacher and Parent Mobile Application8.03 Ratings00 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    Ellucian ColleagueUnique Learning System
    Small Businesses
    No answers on this topic
    Freckle by Renaissance
    Score9.4 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    Schoolmint Hero
    Score9.7 out of 10
    Nearpod
    Score8.9 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Schoolmint Hero
    Score9.7 out of 10
    Edmodo (discontinued)
    Score8.1 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Ellucian ColleagueUnique Learning System
    Likelihood to Recommend
    7.2
    (13 ratings)
    8.5
    (309 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    -
    (0 ratings)
    7.8
    (5 ratings)
    Usability
    7.3
    (2 ratings)
    7.6
    (309 ratings)
    Availability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.2
    (2 ratings)
    Performance
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.2
    (1 ratings)
    Support Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    6.7
    (2 ratings)
    In-Person Training
    -
    (0 ratings)
    5.5
    (1 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.2
    (2 ratings)
    Configurability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    6.8
    (2 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    -
    (0 ratings)
    6.4
    (1 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    5.5
    (2 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    -
    (0 ratings)
    6.4
    (1 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    -
    (0 ratings)
    6.4
    (1 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Ellucian ColleagueUnique Learning System
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Ellucian
    Ellucian Colleague is wonderful at streamlining processes and unifying data related to students, finance, human resources, and financial aid. It continues to support and manage administrative needs, enhance student experiences, and improve operational efficiency across the University. Ellucian Colleague is less suited for quick data retrieval and comprehensive financial reporting. These functions could use some improvement to optimize the user experience.
    Read full review
    Everway (formerly Texthelp and n2y)
    I have actually recommended it to another teacher in a different district for her autism program since she could level and pace it easily and also easily collect IEP data without stressing out her students with extra work. Unique Learning System is also a good program for our autism program because it is consistent with all core subjects, making is very routine based.
    Incentivized
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    Pros
    Ellucian
    • Colleague Student allows us to integrate services across the university for students with staff in various departments able to see the information about a student that they need to serve the student well.
    • Colleague Student makes it easy to see our students current academic record as well as transfer courses (and information) and their past records here at the university. Our old system required a lot of homegrown connection points to be able to see all of this information. It was neither quick nor easy.
    • Colleague Student makes the registration process for our students much easier. Our old system was clunky and would often prevent students from registering for a class but not provide information for them about why. Colleague Student makes it easy for students to see if they are missing a pre-requisite, have a hold, etc., so they can know how to get their registration back on track.
    Incentivized
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    Everway (formerly Texthelp and n2y)
    • Data tracking and progress reports - Unique Learning System's Polaris feature is a user-friendly, simple way to track and monitor progress towards learners IEP goals. When creating a roadmap that follows a learner's IEP, you input data such as learning profiles and benchmark assessments and rubrics that then produce goal suggestions. You can craft your own goal, use a suggested goal, or choose a goal from the goal library. It gives you a great idea of what goals to target based on learner needs and progress. Entering data is super easy, just a date and a data point, and a graph generates for you. From there, it will show the data trend and flag it for you when it's at risk. It is also easy to add an intervention. Quarterly, I use the progress report feature to generate a report that provides me with the graphs that I use to put into IEP writer.
    • Curriculum pacing - My school utilizes Unique Learning System for our daily instruction. Unique Learning System provides pacing guides with what to teach and when. Everything is standards aligned and all of the lesson plans have ways that you can differentiate already built into the plans as well as an easy to use, structured/routine based set up that makes daily lessons predictable for learners to increase engagement.
    • N2Y - My learners love News To You! This provides children with access to informational text. We use it as a "fun Friday" read every week. We read the article in class, watch videos, answer questions, and typically do an activity to go along with it. The kids look forward to it every week, and also enjoy the Joey's Locker games that go along with the articles. They have a new feature to be able to assign activities that go along with the article which is really nice because I assign them as supplemental activities to go along with what we are learning about in class!
    Incentivized
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    Cons
    Ellucian
    • Develop API's that are vendor agnostic rather than selecting specific vendors (Clearinghouse, ImageNow).
    • Colleague tends to be to reactionary to the changing needs in higher education rather than developing the future.
    • Hound clients to pay extra for consulting (consultants are usually bad), rather than helping institutions to use the product. Seems to be the first thing help line personnel jump to rather than working with clients to figure out creative solutions.
    Incentivized
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    Everway (formerly Texthelp and n2y)
    • Unique Learning System's materials in the science and social studies areas aren't "fluffy" as other areas, but they are continuously adding materials
    • The layout of the website isn't the most user friendly, but most teachers are able to navigate easily after an initial training
    • The administrator side of things isn't super straightforward, reports can be confusing to find/run, but the one on one meetings always provide clarity.
    Incentivized
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    Likelihood to Renew
    Ellucian
    No answers on this topic
    Everway (formerly Texthelp and n2y)
    I appreciate all the various resources that Unique Learning System has to offer. However, due to my limited interaction with other resources similar to Unique Learning System I do not know enough to compare it against other programs. I also am not a person in charge of renewing Unique Learning System for my organization.
    Incentivized
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    Usability
    Ellucian
    For decades, Ellucian Colleague has served the University as our primary student record-retention CRM. Its functionality has weathered many recent trends in CRM development and continues to produce the needed results for our constituency and the size of our university. We look forward to continuing to utilize Ellucian Colleague in the future.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Everway (formerly Texthelp and n2y)
    There is a lot of content in Unique Learning System. It can sometimes be time consuming to navigate through everything. I appreciate the depth and breadth of the resources, but it can also be tough to use when I need a worksheet or packet for my students. The use of Unique Learning System on the computer is great, but my students seem to learn best when they have a pen and paper in front of them.
    Incentivized
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    Reliability and Availability
    Ellucian
    No answers on this topic
    Everway (formerly Texthelp and n2y)
    errors will show up
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Performance
    Ellucian
    No answers on this topic
    Everway (formerly Texthelp and n2y)
    there have been few issues with login or glitches
    Incentivized
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    Support Rating
    Ellucian
    No answers on this topic
    Everway (formerly Texthelp and n2y)
    The individuals helping have always been great. The response to requests for changes in functionality or reporting less so.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    In-Person Training
    Ellucian
    No answers on this topic
    Everway (formerly Texthelp and n2y)
    it was all over the place hard to follow along
    Incentivized
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    Implementation Rating
    Ellucian
    No answers on this topic
    Everway (formerly Texthelp and n2y)
    good product
    Incentivized
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    Alternatives Considered
    Ellucian
    I did not use Jenzabar as extensively as Colleague, but they perform similar functions for student information tracking. I think Colleague is more appropriate for use across campus, as its student billing and scheduling options exceed Jenzabar. Jenzabar, however, offers better tools for use exclusively in student affairs. If an organization wants to track all student data, they should consider Colleague.
    Incentivized
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    Everway (formerly Texthelp and n2y)
    We viewed Encore by TeachTown. The product seemed to be a notch above Unique Learning System and included workbooks and other books but was very expensive. The downfalls of Encore was that it did not include the Profile Assessments like Unique Learning System and also the monthly checkpoints which are very valuable.
    Incentivized
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    Scalability
    Ellucian
    No answers on this topic
    Everway (formerly Texthelp and n2y)
    todays weather would not load sometimes
    Incentivized
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    Return on Investment
    Ellucian
    • By keeping student's academic work, financial aid, and accounts receivable information in one location we are able to report without the need for data aggregation.
    • Colleague's web applications allow the students themselves to perform tasks such as enrollment without assistance from staff members.
    • Using customized rules that we can set up in Colleague we can trigger events to happen as data is entered. This eliminates the need not only for someone to remember to perform an additional task, but it also saves the time of performing the actual task.
    Incentivized
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    Everway (formerly Texthelp and n2y)
    • Ease of planning is #1. I am able to plan an entire lesson or a week's worth of lessons during my 30-minute planning time.
    • Data that is collected for IEPs is so valuable and reports are parent-friendly.
    • Students are able to work on the alternative path toward a diploma because this curriculm is covering all of the standards they need to see in order to earn their diploma.
    Read full review
    ScreenShots

    Unique Learning System Screenshots

    Screenshot of assessments and progress monitoringScreenshot of lesson planningScreenshot of research based contentScreenshot of Science of Reading coursesScreenshot of a system overviewScreenshot of teacher reference materials