Renaissance myON® Reader vs Skillsoft Leadership Development Program

I teach 5th/6th grade math and science, but I love finding fun books to explain science and math concepts using books that keep the students engaged. I can make sure to give them several options on their reading level to choose from and know I am meeting a majority of my students needs because they can listen to other book be read if they so choose. My students have learned so much from science graphic novels!

They have a large library - make sure you clearly study the library offerings and choose the courses that are best for you as you will never be able to use all of them. Make sure you survey your user base before purchasing the licensing of the library courses so the courses are 'marked' with an employee in mind to keep costs minimized. Only purchase the Books 24x7 if you have a large IT department - otherwise you might want to lease a smaller content portion. Their Leadership Development, Project Management, business series and critical thinking and technical products are exceptional.

• Easy for students to navigate (even at 1st grade level).
• Lots of non-fiction books.
• Lots of books for a topic if students are doing a research project.

• Covers a wide-breadth of topics ranging from desktop / office skills to communications skills to leadership development
• Offers knowledge portals (Knowledge Centers) around specific topic areas such as Management Development, Six Sigma, Professional Foundations, Sales, etc - that aggregate content from the large Skillsoft resources and present it in a way that is both meaningful and relevant to the learners. Plus, they have editors update the featured topic each month.
• Include a wide variety of learning media such as eLearning courses, books, book summaries and videos.

• I could never figure it out.
• Students levels from their STAR test did not translate into the books suggested on myON.
• The platform is cumbersome and inaccessible for students and teachers.
• I am fairly tech-savvy, but I could never navigate through and understand how myON worked. Eventually, I gave up and switched to Epic.
• The book selection was poor. Only the non-fiction books were interesting to my students. None of the popular titles and authors were available.
• It was a big disappointment and frustration for me and my students.

• The platform does have room to improve their response time for assistance. Depending on the issue an internal "help team may be required"
• They removed what was called "knowledge centers" which could be summed up as an accumulation of books, courses, exams, practice exams, articles and basically any asset within the platform surrounded by a particular subject. This was a great benefit to some of our customer. It was a one-stop-shop but now you would need to search independently for all of those assets.
• Because the platforms library can be customized its a bit of a struggle to have certain assets changed or modified within Skillsoft. You basically are on their time when it comes to updates or any major changes you as a customer would like to make.

I would recommend to renew as this is part of our employee development goals and we make a strong commitment to develop employees' people skills. I think SkillSoft has a very innovative approach to develop people's interpersonal skills other than traditional classroom learning.

The integration between the main Skillsoft portal and Books24x7 could use improvement. Most users don't realize there is actually a separate books portal because the link to it is not that visible. Yet, once they discover it, they realize that the books portal is actually easier to use to search for books, ebook summaries, and videos.

I believe this product provides students with faster and easier access to books. This increases their time spent on task reading. myON reader is a product that is great for students and teachers.

If there are any issues and concerns while using myON, there are many help resources available to offer assistance.

myON Reader works so well with the rest of the Renaissance Platform. This consistency is great for everyone!

Very responsive, knowledge and helpful. They are always focused on ensuring they are doing the very best to support our success.

Just that it takes a village. It cannot be done alone. Everyone needs to know what you are doing and what their role is in the implementation. Tightly managing the project management schedule and resources is important in ensuring that everything gets done on time, and with quality. Education is KEY

Easier to use and has a better availability to students reading habits.

I used Skillsoft before discovering lynda.com at my current firm. Both have strong offerings. lynda.com has broader offerings and seems more technically oriented

• Students continued to read on their level and were motivated by all of the books being an AR book with a quiz and points to earn.

• We are not fully utilizing it due to lack of human resources. It could be better, but there is little time to devote to it.