Brainshark - the JAWS of LMS
July 15, 2014
Brainshark - the JAWS of LMS
Score 1 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Modules Used
- Enterprise
- Learning
Overall Satisfaction with Brainshark
It was initially deployed in the training department using the Learning tool only - and it was very poorly implemented. After understanding more about the product it was rolled out to the entire company using the Enterprise piece. I'm not sure what business problems it was brought in to address, but after a content and use redesign and roll out, we were using it to the fullest potential 'out of the box' experience that was possible. It didn't actually meet our needs as a Learning tool nor as a content distribution tool.
- Brainshark has a lot of on demand online training.
- Customer support was very helpful.
- Permissions apply to the folders that presentations are placed in, not the presentations themselves. This creates a lot of hassle and organizational headache. Permissions should be applied to the presentations via user groups.
- The learning structure allows for presentations/modules to be re-used in curriculum, but the prerequisites tie to the presentation/module. For example...if you want to use presentation XC in two class curricula. In one curriculum you want presentations A and B to be required before taking XC. In the other curriculum, you want presentation U and V to be required before taking XC. This will not work. Since the prerequisites are linked to the presentation XC, you must (using the outlined prerequisites above) take presentations A, B, U, and V before taking XC.
- The way administrative access is set up, it implied there is a system administer. If you have access as an admin, you have access across the entire system. You cannot set up an administrative access allowing the addition of users for certain groups or applying permissions to certain folders.
- The review process is not effective. To review an presentation, the only thing the approver can do is to view the presentation then reject or approve it. The approver needs to be able to be sure that corporate policy for presentation settings are applied (settings per presentation) and this is not possible. We found the approval process a complete waste.
- Managing presentations is very time consuming. There is no way to set an auto-archive per presentation. You can do it for ALL presentations, but that is not a good use of material. Additionally, if the raw material (presentation or video or whatever) is not added as an attachment, there is no way to get the material out of Brainshark without doing a screen-scrape video.
- Once we finally deployed across the company it was more heavily used. It was especially used for on-demand 'just in time' type training.
I did not select Brainshark. In fact, Brainshark was terminated last year and replaced with a full Learning Management system. At $50k annually it is pretty expensive for what it does - at least during our deployment. It's Learning portion is not really a true learning management system.