Google Workspace for Education vs. WizIQ LMS

Google [Workspace for Education (formerly G Suite for Education)] is pretty darn good [at] meeting the needs for educators and students. It is not designed to run your business office, transportation group, or lunch services. It doesn't need to be good at those. Focus on teachers and students. They do that really, really well. The Google folks continue to add features that help serve teacher and students. For example, they have really done a good job of adding Google Meet features such as polling and breakout rooms. Those features required a paid subscription to Workspace, but it makes sense since those features compete with Zoom, which requires a subscription for those services.

Incentivized

They have to try out within their own use case scenarios with a sample learner, and test the features of their course and delivery needs. As there is not a content structuring tool, the course author has to have expertise in content and instruction design to create their own materials. The rest is easy to test and check. Test it on all browsers and test the functionality under various internet service speeds.

Incentivized

• Collaboration
• Toolset
• Reliability

Incentivized

• WizIQ virtual classroom offers an Interactive whiteboard, Screen Sharing, youtube video play, media content upload option.
• Class Recording in MP4
• It provides you with a wonderful experience of a Virtual classroom with better Audio and Video streaming.
• The platform offers courses feature where users can create a paid course, enroll the student in a course and earn.
• Search functionality to find courses/classes from the list
• 24*7 after sales customer service
• Supported languages for the virtual classroom: English, Arabic, Spanish, Czech, French, Greek, German, Turkish, Hindi
• It provides a Virtual Classroom integration option with Moodle, WordPress, Joomla, Java, PHP, .NET websites.

• Google does a good job of providing great admin resources, but they could do better by incorporating what others have developed into the basic platform. For example, there is a command line open-source program called GAM that allows admins to dig much deeper into the back end. More of those resources should be part of the basic offerings.
• It is hard to be critical of something that is free and has been free for so long.
• I wish there was a better way to connect with Google to be able to talk to someone. So much communication is via chat and that is not always the best way to get answers.
• I would recommend that for paying customers in the education market, we get a dedicated phone line to call for support.

Incentivized

• Although all are good but WizIQ needs to improve in these fields...It goes offline once in a while which is a headache as it needs to be constantly managed and needs to be kept under observation all the time.
• It is better for less userbase management as its browser platform is not stable for a larger number of participants.
• We need to manage each online department separately.
• Audio sound needs to be more clear.

I need to overcome some of the important limitations which have been pending for more than 6 months indicating inability of the vendor or lack of clarity among the development team about what we want and how it can be done easily on their platform and MySQL at virtually no cost without ending up in a feature modification custom development and cost. Teaching and learning with respect to an Indian scenario is different and needs to be adapted to the local needs and realities.

Incentivized

I have understood and used most of it by now after 6-7 months of exploration and use. Though there are small glitches that could be easily resolved by WizIQ, I feel comfortable to handle the product by now. However, clients find it a challenge to explore and do not wish to spend time to learn

Incentivized

It has been very good till date.

Incentivized

I have not experienced any of these issues as yet.

Incentivized

Very responsive and accommodating during the sales period, then totally unhelpful, rude and dismissive when you are unhappy with the product. Now ignoring my messages.

It was remote and not in-person.

Incentivized

It was a product presentation and not a live work through kind of training. I had to remember the presentation from remote and then go about the tool/ builder. It was difficult to handle and I had a lot of doubts and clarifications to address in my initial rounds of launching my courses.

Incentivized

I have developed my own expertise and that is for sale to my clients as a part of my consulting services. I have much to share for assignment and assessment models, course design aspects and mentoring aspects as this is a remote self paced service. If the courses are live and managed still there needs to be mentoring and support to help the learner.

Incentivized

Google has a simpler approach to its apps. With all applications being online, things like auto-save being a default have been helpful for many staff in our organisation. Compare this to Microsoft where much of the admin has to be managed by the ICT Team, Google allows for a portion of control to the user to manage permissions of areas. This type of user empowerment helps people see how important ICT is to a business.

Incentivized

I selected WizIQ because I used them when I subscribed for org.wiziq for nearly 10 years. It was firstly trusting in their technical support system in place and their new plug-in. Other products that are available for free or a nominal amount, e.g. Zoom and Google Meet are way better in their performance and features in my opinion.

Seems pretty good to me as of now. Of course there are usage slabs and commercials to handle before scaling up.

Incentivized

• The ROI is 100% since we are using a free version

Incentivized

• By using the WizIQ our team has launched more than 130 courses for internal staff capacity building.
• We also monitor which learner is doing well in the overall assigned courses.
• Created a list of courses which help everyone who is new to the organization.

Incentivized