ELEARNINGFORCE in Edgewater brings learning management to Office 365 and SharePoint. LMS365 blends with the Microsoft infrastructure and is designed to eliminate expensive integration, time-consuming development, and unwanted complexity. Learners access learning plans, courses, personal progress reports, and certificates from within the SharePoint business process.
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Seismic Learning
Score 8.1 out of 10
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Seismic Learning (formerly Lessonly, acquired by Seismic in August 2021), is a learning management system (LMS). The vendor emphasizes eLearning for client-facing skills, as well as a drag-and-drop interface. Lessonly supports customizable learning paths and corporate onboarding processes.
If a customer does not have SharePoint the entry in that kind of solution is a bit harder as the use of SharePoint can be so broad. It does not mean it is not the right solution as a company can use SharePoint LMS to start with and then expand to other functions and features. I strongly recommend to use SharePoint Standard or Enterprise and forgo the "free" SharePoint version as a) SharePoint's core functions and features are greatly enhanced in these two premium versions and b) more and more SharePoint LMS functions make use of these core Standard and Enterprise features in the future, like taxonomy, user profiles, etc. In general with all project it is as well recommended to have the full buy in by upper management and that the project initiative is fully supported. Adding such a solution (SharePoint LMS or any other LMS solution) will require the team not only to have a good plan on how the requirements can be achieved from a technical point of view, but how a training program can be rolled out to an organization of 5, 500, 5.000 or 50.000. The technical deployment of SharePoint LMS is measurable (I would say between 1-4 weeks based on the complexity, scale of the environment). 1-2 weeks of training (depending on the base knowledge of SharePoint in the company and the need to add knowledge of SharePoint LMS). That's it. Technically you are ready. If needed, any custom work, integration and development work comes on top. Where customer struggle is the availability and dedication of their own teams. Course content needs to be created, how should a course look like, what are the parameters, what are top ten things needed moving a course which was taught in a class room, but now to be delivered online. Buying the licenses is one thing, getting the solution up and running form a technical point of view is another, making it YOURS is the challenge!
If you are onboarding new employees or consultants and you have a complex product, solution, or your business is layered and complex, this can help distill down the layers into basics so that new team or partners can build their knowledge base up the right way. This ensures they are learning what needs to be learned, and not what they surmise or assume, which can be incorrect and cause issues down the road - this is especially sensitive in our field. Training of all kinds can be done easily with this tool.
It's completely simple and intuitive, anyone can pick it up. The hardest part is looking for a save button and finally figuring out you don't need one. We don't provide training for users and never have complaints. For creators, we provide best practices, but using Lessonly itself requires nothing .
The few times we actually needed support generally were during major upgrades of the system and getting a quick handle on how the configuration changed were the primary reasons.
The support team is very friendly and eager to help you learn the ins and outs of Lessonly. They can set up training for large groups or send links in a chat for individual help. They are quick to respond and if one person doesn't have the answer, they will collaborate with others to help find the answer.
Throughout my career I came across many different solutions for Knowledge and Collaboration and LMS systems. This includes Lotus Notes, Documentum, Live Link, LMS solutions from Oracle, ADP, another SharePoint based solution. Many years back, with the intro of Microsoft SharePoint, I was drawn to that product and solutions based on SharePoint. SharePoint is very powerful and in it current version, 2013, it is the without a doubt the most feature rich and broad solution platform out there. SharePoint LMS is in my eyes a killer application and if a company, institution or educational entity looks to create, expand, change up their training efforts for employees, customer, partners, students, SharePoint LMS is the tool to look at. If you have SharePoint already installed, it is a must look at, period. SharePoint LMS became the tool of choice, I recommended when I was a consultant, when I worked as a Director for Learning Management Systems at a local University. I am now part of a team which not only sells, but as well consults around SharePoint LMS.
I felt some of these products had more features than were necessary and needed for our team. Some of them were limited on the number of content creators that were allowed which to me forces you to use one or two people to create content where I would rather see it done by key members of each department.
We've had an increase in quality overall as a company, as we are able to continually train our employees outside of our New Hire Training program.
We've seen stronger communication as we are able to send out material to our stylists about products, policies, procedures, etc. and they are able to provide us with feedback. After all, it is their tool for learning and we want to know the best way to provide that information to our Team Members.
