PeopleAdmin Higher Ed Platform, from Powerschool vs. Top Hat

Organizations who have very few applications and/or very few positions posted are probably less likely to benefit as high from PeopleAdmin. Large organizations who have several positions and/or several applications/applicants can definitely benefit from this product. This product is not as well suited for performance management as I had hoped because there is not a lot of freedom to creating and designing different evaluations for different position types in the system when you have an organization that has thousands of different employees and types.

Incentivized

Top Hat is well suited for courses where students are comfortable with utilizing online learning management system as part of their course contents. It is more appropriate to use Top Hat as a stand-alone learning management system or if the school happens to have it integrated to the system. It is not recommended to use Top Hat and another platform or system for students as this would be too much for students.

Incentivized

• Applicant tracking was a good use of this tool for our department. I think it could use a few more customization features but overall it was a good tool to weed out applicants who were not qualified for the position.
• The system has some canned reporting tools that also worked well for our department and management needs.
• It was a great place to house our position descriptions and provided a readily accessible source for hiring managers to make requested updates and changes and for employees to see and have access to their position descriptions.

• I use Top Hat as a discussion tool where the students can write what they have learned or what they haven't.
• Exams are taken in class and are totally paperless with grades available immediately.

Incentivized

• PeopleAdmin's internal report writer needs work. Currently, in version 7, reporting can only be done requisition number by requisition number. The report writer needs to be modified so it can create reports enterprise-wide.
• PeopleAdmin's Data Mart product needs substantial modification. In version 5.8, on a monthly basis, PeopleAdmin provided us with an Microsoft Access database containing our historical data up to that period end. In version 7, the "Data Mart" contains our historical data. The Data Mart consists of over 300 files. These files are not database table downloads nor is it parts of a database data dump. Rather, the files appear to be scrapes from html pages. They contain html codes and other character data that needs to be cleaned before they can be uploaded. The files are not in a table-by-table format. Any one file can contain data from two or more tables. The format of the Data Mart makes it difficult to load the data into a database and format it in a table structure that is comparable to the Access database provided with version 5.8.

• If students are paying, it's a confusing onboarding process for students and instructors and could be better streamlined.
• The Android app not as well polished as iOS.
• A better, free, or ad-supported model might be more palpable to students.
• Integration directly with PowerPoint -- not requiring instructors to upload their slides to Top Hat.

Incentivized

We are evaluating our options as it relates to PeopleAdmin. We are likely to renew as we can not find another product that gives us the functionality we have with PeopleAdmin 5.8 in the area of Position Description. Outside of that, we would likely be close to finding another product solution.

They are very helpful and fast to resolve any issues

Incentivized

I've used both Target Recruit and HR Smart. When working with Target Recruit it quickly became apparent it was not the right solution for us. Another solution we examined prior to selection PeopleAdmin was iCIMS. iCIMS is a very social system but was not as familiar with the Higher Education recruitment processes as was PeopleAdmin.

Incentivized

Top Hat generally stacks up pretty well against other industry leading or popular learning management systems. Top Hat is comparable to learning management systems used in most educational institutions. The features such as allowing the educator to create an interactive experience by leveraging tools such as quizzes and polls is comparable. Data on student performance is also a helpful feature that is comparable to that of other similar learning management systems.

Incentivized

• We are now able to track our recruitment sources to determine our ROI on university paid subscriptions.
• We have reduced our recruiting approval review times by 50%
• We have identified areas for improvement substancially by having robust reporting available at our fingertips.

• One of the better ways to track attendance in a mostly secure and automated way.
• Promotes more active learning, especially in large classrooms.
• Unpopular if students have to pay.

Incentivized