CYPHER Learning Reviews

Our organization has multiple divisions. We started with the iQ Retail division, which develops Retail ERP software solutions. Each division within our organization offers different software solutions. We train people on how to use our software through CYPHER Learning, which is available internally and externally.

CYPHER Learning is a SaaS solution.

We used to offer classroom-based courses only, but we found that travel costs and time restraints were becoming too much for our students. We were looking for a more affordable / accessible way to reach more students, and CYPHER Learning helped us do that.

CYPHER Learning's features effectively boosted our efficiency. We are now able to offer a wider range of services at a competitive cost. Being a Global company with  13 branches, being able to reach global initiatives, is a great advantage.

The timing for rolling out CYPHER Learning was very beneficial, as we relaunched one of our divisions with a new type of learning just before the COVID-19 pandemic hit. This allowed our instructors to train and teach remotely.

As a corporate university, we use CYPHER Learning to provide internal training for our employees and external training for our clients / partners. This hybrid training model is vital to our ever evolving organization.

The hybrid training platform helps us attract top talent by showcasing our capabilities and providing support and knowledge to our clients in an interactive and engaging experience.

The solution can be used to assist in pre-certifying resellers online before they enter the market. 

CYPHER Learning helped us expand our training efforts. Before CYPHER Learning, we only offered classroom training, which required learners to travel to one of our training facilities. We can now offer online training, which eliminates the need for travel. This has substantially decreased the cost of training, making it more accessible to more learners.

CYPHER Learning saved us around 30 percent of our administrative work through the app that easily adapts to different markets. 

CYPHER Learning is a user-friendly platform that makes it easy for me to manage my instructors and track my learners. My instructors can provide feedback to learners on the same day. We work with a variety of clients, and we can provide them with an analysis of how their learners are performing. As an administrator, I have an overview of what our clients think of our platform.

The reporting has room for improvement. I would like more reporting options.

Screen sorting can be improved by providing more filtering options. 

I have been using CYPHER Learning for almost seven years.

CYPHER Learning is stable and we are notified well in advance of any planned downtime for upgrades or maintenance.

CYPHER Learning is scalable. We current have about 550 people signed up to use the solution.

The technical support is good and responds to our issues within two hours.

The setup is straightforward. The deployment took around two weeks and required me and two others to complete.

The implementation was completed in-house.

We have seen a return on investment through administrative time-saving and global reach.

CYPHER Learning's price is slightly higher than other solutions.

I give CYPHER Learning an eight out of ten.

We have multiple organizations. Our iQ Retail division uses CYPHER Learning extensively. A few other divisions use the solution on a much smaller scale. In total, five or six divisions use the solution.

For someone looking to grow in a growing environment, CYPHER Learning is worth checking out. CYPHER Learning provides the flexibility to grow with us, whether we have multiple platforms or need to migrate to a new system.

CYPHER Learning offers a variety of learning approaches.

We use it for asynchronous learning across our institution.

First, use of CYPHER Learning was able to save us from the effects of the pandemic. There are many schools in the Philippines that have downsized, where student enrollment became lower compared to previous years. And some schools have closed down. We actually trained other education institutions on how to deliver online and blended learning, because we had done it so much.

Even before the pandemic, 75 percent of our faculty was already using CYPHER Learning, so we just had to target the other 25 percent. We formed a committee of our experts in using CYPHER Learning to help influence that 25 percent, so that ultimately we did not have to cancel or cut our education programs. Everything continued despite the pandemic. We finished our academic calendar, as planned, but in the new modality. Without CYPHER Learning, I don't think we would have been able to do that.

Our university, De La Salle University – Dasmariñas, is the greenest campus in the Philippines and has been for many years now. One of the ways we have been able to achieve that is thanks to CYPHER Learning, through paperless transactions. For example, many teachers upload exams. And we are not required to print a syllabus. It's already uploaded online. Previously, the university would spend between 50,000 to 100,000 Philippine pesos on printing it, so we are already saving that much on the syllabus alone. When adding in not having to print out all of our exams, we are saving hundreds of thousands of pesos on printing costs.

In addition, we save a lot in terms of office costs such as electricity for air conditioning because we can work from home. A given department has three days onsite and another three days online when they are not required to go to the school. That alone saves a lot of costs related to the environment, such as greenhouse gasses resulting from transportation. We save millions of pesos on electricity alone because we're not required to be onsite as much as we used to be.

Our former director had a study done, in partnership with our environmental management center, and they were able to track how much carbon footprint and how much paper we have saved by using CYPHER Learning. Per student, we're saving a lot, financially, thanks to CYPHER Learning.

Competency-based learning is very important for our institution. There is a commission of higher education that manages and monitors all higher education modalities. We can continue delivering online learning or blended learning for as long as we're able to prove that it's effective. We need to be able to prove that the modality, whether synchronous or asynchronous, is effective, and one way to do that is to measure how well students are able to achieve the learning outcomes. So it's actually a must. It's not optional. We have an upcoming accreditation next year and we are already preparing the documents to prove that this type of modality influences learning outcomes. We have some data and we're still generating more.

The platform has helped to reduce administrative work. We can easily produce the reports required for accreditation, using the reporting features in CYPHER Learning, like the utilization and active accounts. We have also just started integrating it with our SIS (student information system). It's not yet perfect, but we're getting close to where we envisioned ourselves. That integration has also helped to reduce administrative costs a lot.

In terms of the amount of time saved on administrative work, my team is solely in charge of adding and dropping students. It would take us months to do that manually, as we have 12,000 to 14,000 students. Because of the SIS integration, it's automated. We just troubleshoot any problems that may arise. The integration is saving us 90 percent of the time it would take us for that alone. Also, only those with active Office 365 accounts can log in to our learning management system. There is a way to create the accounts in bulk, but it would take several days to complete thousands of accounts. Thanks to SSO we don't have to do that. We just let the system do its work. That also saves a lot of time.

For me, one of the most valuable features is the grade book. Before, we were using Excel to manually encode formulas. But now, we can directly export the grades from the LMS and link them to the submission to our university portal. It makes things easier and everything is automated. Aside from a tutorial, provided by CYPHER Learning, our office also organized a learning program on how to utilize the grade book efficiently.

Another feature that is great for me, but that is not adopted institutionally because it's a bit difficult, and because we're a higher education institution with varying disciplines, is the learning outcomes feature. We changed the name. In CYPHER Learning, it's called the Mastery feature. The learning outcomes feature allows us to measure whether students have achieved competency, based on the encoded learning outcomes.

Universities like ours have to prove that their modality is effective, and learning outcomes are one way to do that. Because not all our faculties are using this feature, they are still conducting manual surveys to determine whether the students have achieved learning outcomes. But for those who are already using it, it's a very easy process. Instead of rigorous research to know whether students are achieving the learning outcomes, the LMS can do it for you.

We are trying our best to mobilize this feature so that faculties will adopt it on an institutional level. However, our faculties have 18 units of workload and some of them have up to 24 units. That's a lot of teaching units.

And I have done a study on the use of CYPHER Learning's gamification feature. It's a correlation study. While there is a low correlation, but positive, between time spent in the LMS and a student's grades, there is a high correlation between gamification and a student's grades. Those who are performing well in the games in class tend to perform well in their grades as well, although we have not proven that on an institutional level. These are just some limited cases. But the data so far shows that gamification works.

Creating games for classes or learning paths is easy for me, but it depends on the type of user. We also have a learning path for teachers such that before they can teach in our institution, they need to pass level three. But gamification is actually not required at that level. It's part of level four. For those who are just starting out, creating games is quite difficult. On a scale of one to 10, where 10 is "difficult," it's a seven or eight. But once you have used gamification, you can recycle the games that you created and then it becomes a two or three on the difficulty scale.

CYPHER Learning's gamified learning environment for helping with teaching and learning is very helpful and it's a must. It's included in the syllabus that all who are teaching this subject should have a gamified class, but again, it has not been adopted across the institution.

All my classes are gamified. There are levels and badges; they get points awarded and there are certificates. We have two departments where all their e-classes are gamified. One is our religious education and the other is our civic welfare training service, which is a required subject. They realized the importance of gamifying e-class content.

In our course, we have synchronous and asynchronous classes. If we don't gamify our asynchronous sessions, there's a very low level of student engagement. Some students are not even attending lessons at all if these are not gamified. By gamifying them, they get rewards. That means they really watch the video or they really read the lesson. We have metrics to show that they're really reading the modules once the classes are gamified.

In terms of automating assignments, they should be able to measure the intended learning outcomes. We have rubrics that are connected directly to the learning outcomes, so we don't have to retype everything. We can link the learning outcomes to the assessments in the rubrics.

There's no platform, other than CYPHER Learning, that is used for assessments. It's the most used feature.

The gamification feature's automation for triggering actions for completed tasks, such as awarding badges and points to students, is one of the difficult areas, especially for teachers who are late adopters of education technology. It's a challenge because it's like you're programming the actions. The language is quite tricky. Our office does have a training unit if a teacher wants to gamify their class. We can give them a hands-on tutorial on how to do that. But some of our staff is not really used to this kind of "programming" language.

Creating competencies and then tagging them in class content and assignments, is a six or seven in terms of difficulty, where 10 is "difficult." That's on your first try. Once you've created competencies, you can just recycle them.

Also, right now, there is a problem with tagging assessments and competencies. We have reported it. Technically, you can tag each question to a certain competency but we're not doing it right now, because if we do so there's a problem. It's one of the weaknesses. I'm not sure if it has already been resolved. The issue is that if you tag your assessment question with a competency, the grade will be zero regardless of whether it's correct or incorrect. When that is resolved, it will provide a much deeper sense of, or data on, how students achieve learning outcomes. It can even count the examination or question bank in terms of the achievement of certain learning outcomes.

In addition, as an administrator of our CYPHER Learning, there are a lot of things that could be improved, but these are not seen by students or professors. One is the admin features for adding students. These features could be separated and we have requested that several times, but I think their programming team is finding it hard to do that.

In another LMS—I think it is Moodle—there is a summary overview of how many attempts students made, and whether they left the browser. You can see if the students have left the browser or stopped midway, and you can see the percentage in particular learning outcomes. Currently, in CYPHER Learning, you can only view this for individual students. There's no way to see the overall average attempt score. You have to do it individually for each student before you can see that.

We've been using CYPHER Learning as a university since 2015, but some of the faculty have been using it since as early as 2010. Personally, I started using it in 2012. I was one of the early adopters of CYPHER Learning.

It's very stable with the exception of very few, periodic downtimes for maintenance, which usually happens on a Sunday. There are usually very few students logged on Sundays. The stability is not perfect, but it's a nine out of 10.

The first time we had to scale it was during the pandemic, which started in March, because in April our activity doubles. We have examination week and 10,000 students are logged in at one time, and we did not experience any downtime during that time. CYPHER LEARNING understood the situation when the pandemic started and sensed there could be a problem. Every school, all over the world, resorted to online learning and many started using CYPHER Learning. The vendor increased its capacity and the problem was resolved in April or May of that year.

One hundred percent of our faculty, from our high school, to undergraduate, up to graduate school, including masters and PhD programs, are using CYPHER Learning. It is even used in our short courses. And when we have institutional webinars, access is via an e-class. It's also used by non-academics, such as our support programs, like wellness and guidance counseling. They have modules in our learning management system. Our library is also linked to our learning management system.

Our unit, the Center for Innovative Learning Programs, monitors the utilization of our LMS. We score them on how they use the LMS. Some are using it to the fullest extent, some just for minor uploading, but I can definitely say everyone is using it.

Right now, in our college and graduate school portal, we have 13,000 students, 1,000 professors, and 500 parents in CYPHER Learning. The senior high school has 2,300 students and 130 teachers.

Their technical support is very fast. On a scale of one to 10, it's a 10. Our team is usually the first line of technical support for our university. If we cannot handle certain things, that's when we ask CYPHER Learning. They're very quick to respond, even during the wee hours.

Positive

At our college and graduate schools, CYPHER Learning was the first and only LMS.  However, our high school used another LMS. They just finished their two-year contract with that solution and they switched to CYPHER Learning. We did a survey and everyone in our high school rated the CYPHER Learning really highly, compared to the previous LMS.

I was not involved in the initial setup but the LMS is on the cloud, while our internal systems are onsite. Because we are in the Philippines, we experience a lot of blackouts, but we're not affected by them because the servers are located in the US.

The LMS alone cannot guarantee a return on investment. If used effectively and supported by policies, with the right LMS and with the right operations, there will definitely be a return on investment. You can see a return on investment as early as after one semester.

We are adopting an e-learning maturity model. That's how we run our office. We train, we monitor, and we provide technical support. Those are the three areas that help us to be successful.

In our case, because we were the first institution to adopt CYPHER Learning in the Philippines, we may have the cheapest LMS. I don't think we're switching anytime soon, just due to that factor alone.

Our satisfaction with the pricing is a 10 out of 10. None of our administrators or anyone else is changing our LMS. Even if all other De La Salle schools are using Canvas, we're not shifting because we're deeply rooted in this LMS.

In our school, CYPHER Learning is part of our culture already. It is deeply ingrained in terms of its use by students and faculty.

I was not part of the office when our institution evaluated solutions, one of which was Moodle, but I saw the process. They looked for certain criteria and compared all the features, aside from price. Back then, CYPHER Learning had all the features, even though it did not have all the features it has now. That was the basis on which the decision was made to purchase CYPHER Learning.

We did an institutional survey about six months ago and CYPHER Learning got a very high score. Everyone loves it. Even those who have used other LMSs, like BigSky and Moodle, say that we have a superior LMS compared to what they were using. We have faculty who were also administrators at other universities and they are really impressed with the design, layout, and advanced nature of the features of CYPHER Learning. We're blessed to have CYPHER Learning.

Technology is just one component of teaching/learning. Pedagogy is another that is very important. That's why we have a unit that is solely responsible for bridging the gap between technology and pedagogy. It's very important because some teachers are very apprehensive about using a new LMS because they think it's not effective. They have no choice because we have a policy that they have to use it. So we have experts in our office in charge of convincing them that it's about tweaking pedagogy.

That means we can't just directly "translate" everything from face-to-face to online. That would not produce any learning. We have to modify it so that it suits the delivery method. That's why our office is in charge of periodically providing training and webinars for our faculty. We do targeted training, because e-learning in the context of mathematics, for example, is very different from religious education. And training staff on the use of an effective pedagogy will further solidify for them why they should use gamification, why they should use the learning outcomes feature and all other features of our LMS.

The curriculum has to be carefully modeled and translated into assessments which should achieve the learning outcomes. As for our students' career paths, based on tracer studies, we're pretty successful in that field, although we cannot attribute that entirely to CYPHER Learning.

When it comes to intervention strategies for students who need guidance, CYPHER Learning doesn't help save time because you have to configure things. But once you have done that, the easier part begins. The next time you're using the same modules, everything is going to be easy, especially with adaptive learning. When a student's score goes lower than the passing grade, they will be forced to read the lesson again before they're able to continue to the next part of the module. Automation really helps. We can even provide kind messages for passing and for achieving certain scores, giving automated feedback.

Also, we used to have a team of checkers who checked if teachers were teaching in their classrooms. Because of our learning management system, we have analytics and we can see our teachers' digital activity. We would also hire temporary workers for faculty evaluation, workers who would go to classrooms and distribute the surveys. We now use our LMS to announce the faculty evaluation, which is done online as well. We haven't had to hire a single temporary worker as a result. The LMS has made some of our staff obsolete.

I have tried four LMSs aside from CYPHER Learning. Before I became part of De La Salle, I tried several LMSs, and I'm also enrolled at another university right now taking my PhD. Nothing compares to CYPHER Learning.

We operate an online education platform that sells courses to audiences all over the world. We have a global audience, and we use CYPHER Learning as our primary learning management system. CYPHER Learning is our only LMS.

CYPHER Learning is a web-based application, so there is no need to deploy it. However, there is also an app that can be used to access the portal.

CYPHER Learning has allowed us to spend less time administering content. We no longer have to worry about whether our website is functioning or whether the content is being delivered as intended. That's what CYPHER Learning is for. They streamline the delivery of content, so we know how to set up classes, courses, assessments, and diplomas. CYPHER Learning also takes on a lot of the administrative burden from our organization, including customer support.

We use the gamification feature in relation to certification, but we are not yet taking full advantage of it. We are definitely looking into it.

CYPHER Learning has helped us reduce our training costs by approximately $2,000 per person trained.

CYPHER Learning has helped to reduce costs related to printing our materials.

We wouldn't be able to do what we do without CYPHER Learning. It's hard to quantify how much CYPHER Learning has helped increase profits, but it's essential to our business. Without CYPHER Learning, we wouldn't have a school.

The entire system is incredibly valuable, but one of the reasons we chose CYPHER Learning was the social interaction features, such as forums, student groups, and messaging. We hadn't seen these features in other learning management systems. The assessment management is also amazing. Overall, the system is well-designed. However, the social features were the deciding factor.

CYPHER Learning should definitely offer live video conferencing integration. We currently need to outsource this service, which means we cannot run webinars from within CYPHER Learning. This is definitely on our wish list.

The initial setup process is a bit cumbersome, but it is not impossible to complete. The company's support is excellent, so we were able to get help with any questions we had. 

The platform had a bit of a learning curve for our team, but our users, who tend to be older, were able to use it seamlessly. The average age of our users is over 50, so they are not always tech-savvy. We have had very few issues with our users being able to use the platform. Overall, the platform is user-friendly for our users, but it could be more user-friendly for administrators.

We learned some of the rules for assessments and completion the hard way. For example, if we change a role, it is not applied automatically. We have to manually update the role. We needed to verify that people had completed all the requirements to be issued a certificate. We changed the role halfway through the process because we found out that there was a gap and people were falling through the cracks. However, we had to manually correct the already-issued certificates. Therefore, the change of rules does not apply retroactively. We need to test anything that is conditional, especially completion rules.

I have been using CYPHER Learning for six years.

The solution is highly stable. In the six years we have been using CYPHER Learning, we have not experienced any downtime or crashing.

CYPHER Learning is very scalable. We are somewhere in the middle of its scalability range. This was one of the reasons we chose CYPHER Learning, as we were at the bottom of its scalability range at the time, and there is still room for us to grow comfortably without having to switch platforms.

The technical support is incredibly responsive, helpful, and respectful. They have their own support forum, where many questions have already been answered. However, if we need help, the support team has always been quick to respond and provide assistance.

Positive

The initial setup was a five out of ten. I had a general idea of the course structure, and I built it up one lesson at a time, exploring as I went. I didn't do a lot of forward planning, other than planning the course itself and then trying to use the platform to achieve that goal. I didn't start by looking at what the platform could do and then model the course on that.

The implementation was completed in-house with the help of technical support.

I give the solution a nine out of ten.

We are not yet ready to use CYPHER Learning's ability to recommend courses or assignments to learners based on their job titles or a set of competencies. This is because we sell the courses from our website. Instead, we are currently creating pathways for learners manually. This is something we want to explore further in the future, but we have not had the capacity to do so yet.

We have eight tutors that use CYPHER Learning within our organization.

There is maintenance required for the content, such as our courses. However, the platform itself does not require any maintenance, which is a great benefit of using CYPHER Learning. All of the platform's functionalities are provided by CYPHER Learning itself.

Users should know what they want to achieve with the platform, and they should also take the time to explore all of the platform's capabilities. Once users are set up, which is our current challenge, it can be difficult to add features like gamification or competency-based learning if they were not part of the original plan. Therefore, users should have a clear idea of their goals, but they should also be flexible and willing to adapt their strategy as they learn more about the platform.

We use CHYPHER Learning to deliver all our apprenticeship programs. All of the apprentice learners are added to the platform and follow several courses. We also provide access to employers so they can monitor the learners' progress.

We find that learners are much more invested in CHYPHER Learning compared to other LMS platforms we used in the past. The people who use the platform to learn and do their assignments are the ones who benefit the most from the system. It enabled us to engage with learners more than the previous systems we used.

We do a little gamification, but the problem is that our learners start at different times throughout the year. We have rolling programs, but some gamification features aren't relevant if one person starts in October and another in February. The person who started earlier will be ahead on any leaderboards, which isn't helpful. Gamification doesn't affect our learners' progress much because we haven't used it as much as we'd like. The interface isn't too important because of the nature of our rolling programs. 

We look at how we can extend what learners do based on their job roles. If they complete particular assignments well, we introduce other topics based on what they achieve. 

I don't think it has reduced our training costs. We still primarily do face-to-face instruction. Also, our goal for CYPHER Learning isn't necessarily to save money. We use it to enhance our programs. However, it saved us money on printing materials. 

The most valuable feature is competency tracking. All apprentices follow particular programs where they have to demonstrate competencies, skills, knowledge, and behavior standards. The ability to track and measure their progress against the norm is functional. By aligning the work that our learners submit and the learning resources, we get an excellent picture of where they are in their progression.

We're judged on those people's ability to achieve those competencies. We must ensure they meet the standards because they will be independently assessed after finishing the program. 

I've got one bespoke request with CYPHER Learning, but it's not an overall product improvement. I'd like a way to set deadlines for assignments to be submitted by learners' onboarding programs based on their enrollment dates. For example, if a learner starts in October, and we want the assignment submitted 30 days after that. 

We've been using CHYPHER Learning since October 2020.

CYPHER Learning is a solid platform. I rarely have problems with it. We had a caching issue a few months back, but we've had no problems aside from that. 

Adding more students to CYPHER Learning is simple. You just need to pay more money.

I rate CYPHER Learning's support a ten out of ten. I've contacted them several times and always gotten satisfactory answers. 

Positive

I built a custom solution a while ago. It was great, but keeping it updated was painful, and people constantly asked me questions about it. We also used Moodle and Lodash in the past.

I used CYPHER Learning in its previous form when it was called EDU 2.0. After that, I built my own system, but it was too much of a hassle. Finally, in 2020, I decided I would switch to another solution. I tested out Moodle, but it wasn't very good for competency-based learning, so I adopted CYPHER Learning. 

CYPHER Learning is a SaaS platform. We subscribe to it and add learners as needed. The setup is straightforward, but there are a few advanced features that you need to get your head around if you want to extend the way the platform works. I've done lots of work with webhooks and APIs to extend the platform and integrate our data systems. It's quite simple to log in and use the platform. There is no maintenance on our end. 

We are funded by the government, so we're capped at what each program costs. Students who use CYPHER Learning give us positive feedback, and the improved experience helps increase the number of learners. Getting learners to engage with the platform is always a challenge. They go on there, do the work, and leave positive feedback. It's great. 

We're considered a business, so we don't get education discounts. However, I am funded by the government the same way that a college or a school is funded. I don't have the kind of flexibility to pay these prices. It's a little bit more than I want to pay, but I'm okay with it.

I rate CYPHER Learning a ten out of ten. Before implementing CYPHER Learning, make sure you need all of its features. A lot of it is modular, so you can pick what you want.

We use it in a few ways. When we started 18 months ago, we had a website that offered short, continuous education courses in things like sales development. We moved that website into CYPHER Learning. We also gradually migrated our RTO courses into CYPHER Learning, starting about a year ago.

We also develop LMS portals for our business partners as sub-organizations within our LMS. We have a handful of those running at the moment.

The system we initially used for RTO did not provide the best look and feel. It was like a huge ship with very complicated and sophisticated features. "Moving" it was a task. CYPHER Learning, by comparison, is a super-yacht. It's very agile, modern, very quick to respond, and it looks great.

Although we rarely use it for our internal staff's education, our partners use it for their own team members. Our team members, who are admins or instructors in the platform, have an additional account to use when they're doing their personal continuous development. In that way, it's like there are two separate systems from the viewpoint of the end-user, and it works well for us.

Another benefit is that some of the automations and syncing features have reduced admin hours by a lot for us. It has been a great help. It saves us a couple of hours per week.

Initially, I was very excited about the automations. But when we started using the actual courses, I found that the ability to sync content and settings from parent courses to child courses is what I value the most. But both the automations and syncing are at the top of the list.

Also, the automation for triggering actions for completed tasks, such as awarding badges and points to students, works very well. We use Credly badges, and when we first moved the continuous improvement side of the business to CYPHER Learning we had more than 50 courses, which meant we had more than 50 badges. However, we found there was a limit on the number of badges. We reached out to CYPHER Learning and they fixed it quickly for us. We were then able to add more than 50 badges.

One thing I find annoying is that the system is quite limited when it comes to roles. I was used to our old system where I could create custom roles to cater to specific users and that's not available in CYPHER Learning.

Another issue is the customization of the gradebook. I'm used to a highly customizable gradebook, but that's also not available in CYPHER Learning.

I have been using CYPHER Learning for around 18 months.

It is a stable product and that's one of the features that was on my list. It's also very fast, so we don't have any worries about access.

There has rarely been any downtime and, when it has happened once or twice, it has happened during late hours, so we haven't had to worry about it.

It's scalable. We have deployed a few portals for our partners, and that was super easy. It just worked.

We have about 100 internal users of the platform.

They're really good, very responsive, and knowledgeable. They respond within an hour, maximum.

Positive

The previous system we used for our continuous education courses was clunky and old. We had moved to it from an even older system, being the most reliable product that we could move to quickly. It was WordPress-based and it had a very limited LMS called LearnDash. We needed something bigger, more expandable, and that looked more modern, and that's what we found in CYPHER Learning.

The setup was very easy. They helped a lot in setting up the look and feel, from the beginning, using our branding colors. But I set up the portals for our partners and it was very easy to do. Things like setting up the roles that we wanted and selecting what roles to add in were very straightforward.

Our strategy was determined by our need to move our continuous improvement website, and that was the major portion of it. We needed to move completion data and courses, and migrate our live students as well, and that had to be carefully planned.

Once it's set up, it's good to go. In terms of maintenance, there are updates and improvements that need to be communicated to staff.

We have seen ROI because we have a lot of courses that require a lot of storage space, and we don't have to worry about that with CYPHER Learning. With the other LMSs that we used, storage was a big issue, especially because we have to keep records for 30 years due to government requirements. It is worth our while to use CYPHER Learning.

The pricing is somewhere in the middle. It's not too expensive and, for what it is, it's very reasonable.

I wasn't involved in evaluating other solutions. Someone else did that for us and they looked at multiple systems. We had a spreadsheet with our requirements and CYPHER Learning ticked most of the boxes. That's why we went with it.

There are a lot of learning management systems out there and they are oranges and apples. You have to choose what meets your targets. All the systems are good for the end-users. If you want something where you don't have to worry much about maintenance or uptime, a system that is very modern looking and easy to use, and something you can get up and running fairly quickly, CYPHER Learning is a good choice.

Overall, I rate the solution at eight out of 10. I wouldn't rate it higher because of the rigidity of the roles and gradebooks. Also, there are simpler things like quiz-question types that are not as varied as in other LMSs. But the overall experience is just fantastic.

We use CYPHER Learning to train our employees and the public.

CYPHER Learning is hosted on our users' website. Our users can access it by logging in.

Several of our internal teams have joined the program, and they create training modules, which we then upload to CYPHER Learning and make available to everyone. CYPHER Learning has now put us in the position to provide better internal training than ever before, thanks to this tool that makes it easier. Since we have employees in multiple locations, we are now able to train our entire team more efficiently.

We have seen a small reduction in printing costs, but I foresee more savings as we ramp up our training.

I like that CYPHER Learning can accommodate all types of media, including video and audio. It is also easy to use. 

I really like that we can add third-party apps to make CYPHER Learning more useful. 

The assessment tools are one of the reasons we chose CYPHER Learning, so we could provide instructional feedback for incorrect assessment answers.

The customization is very good because it allows us to completely brand the product so that it is our brand.

I really appreciate the ability to provide feedback for assessments. However, the user interface for this feature is not very user-friendly. I think it could be improved by making it easier to understand.

CYPHER Learning has a lot of resources for finding answers. They have a search tool that allows us to search for answers on our own. However, I think it would be helpful if the resources were more structured in a how-to format. This would allow us to find the information we need without having to talk to a trainer or tech support. I think the current feature is good, but there could be more self-learning opportunities for how to use the product.

I have been using CYPHER Learning for almost eight months.

CYPHER Learning is stable. We have not had any issues.

CYPHER Learning is highly scalable. We are not using all the seats available yet.

The technical support is quick. I usually receive a response within just a few hours. If the support is not quite able to answer my question, they are very quick to respond to my follow-up questions. Once, a junior analyst answered my question, and then I think a senior analyst came in and added to the explanation to make it clearer. I'm not sure if it was to correct the junior analyst or to provide additional assistance, but it was impressive.

Positive

The initial setup is straightforward. However, it is a very full-featured system, so it has taken a lot of training to learn how to use it effectively. CYPHER Learning has provided excellent training materials, and our IT department has been very helpful in setting up the system and connecting it to our other systems. Overall, I think the setup process has been fairly straightforward.

We had several meetings with our IT and project management teams. It took some time to convince them of the benefits of using CYPHER Learning. I am on the education team, and our job is to train both internal and external users. We held several meetings and demos to explain what we wanted to use CYPHER Learning for and why we chose it. Once we had their buy-in, it was just a matter of getting the paperwork and approvals in order. Now we are in the process of creating half a dozen courses. We are still in the early stages of implementing CYPHER Learning, but we are excited about the possibilities.

Three people were involved in the deployment: two from the education team and one from IT.

The implementation was completed in-house.

We are still in the development phase. At this time, we are not seriously considering generating revenue through courses. Instead, we will be relying mostly on savings, travel expenses for training, and other expenses. As a result, I cannot say that we have seen a return on investment yet. CYPHER Learning is still in the investment phase.

We were happy with the pricing for CYPHER Learning. As a nonprofit, we received a discount. They were also able to work with us on some other questions we had. This was one of the reasons we chose CYPHER Learning. The price was fair for all the features we received.

We evaluated dozens of solutions and considered all of their features, prices, and reviews. In addition to CYPHER Learning, we narrowed down our choices to Moodle and Tovuti LMS. 

We selected CYPHER Learning primarily because of positive customer reviews and a competitive price. Customer reviews praised its ease of use, and the price was fair for the features we received. Additionally, CYPHER Learning appeared to have plenty of room for us to grow into. The features were robust enough that we would likely not use them all at first, but we would learn to use them as we needed them. CYPHER Learning seemed like it would challenge us, and it has. 

I give CYPHER Learning a nine out of ten. There are a few tweakable areas but I have no regrets about selecting CYPHER Learning.

We currently do not use the competency-based learning features of CYPHER Learning. However, one reason we chose CYPHER Learning is because it has the capacity to support our future growth in this area. Therefore, it is something we may use in the future, but not yet. 

We do have some audit automation as far as emails, reminders, and things like that, but not specifically gamification.

Since CYPHER Learning is a new system in our organization, we have not yet seen a reduction in our training costs. However, we anticipate a reduction in training costs as we begin to train employees remotely and no longer have to fly trainers to different locations.

We currently have 50 users, and we expect to have many more as we increase our training volume.

CYPHER Learning has not required any maintenance as of yet.

CYPHER Learning is a very powerful tool with many features. However, this also means that it has a steep learning curve. If we don't have a lot of time or are not comfortable with technology, CYPHER Learning may not be the best solution for us. However, if we are looking for a scalable and powerful tool that can grow with our needs, CYPHER Learning is a great option. Just be aware that it will take some time to learn how to use it effectively.

It's a learning management system for students to log into and use, and for teachers and mentors to go into and check on students. Parents can also go in.

We have hundreds of students a month who go through the platform. We use the platform to produce reports which assist us with compliance.

The system is so good that we rarely have to even physically talk to any of our clients on the phone. It's just fully managed online and manages the whole process from the start of the student engagement all the way through their training, communicating with them via the platform, and completion of their training. It's one of the few platforms that just works.

I have a philosophy in business: Whenever my phone rings from one of my customers I assume I'm doing something wrong. For example, I may talk to one of my schools in Victoria, one that runs our platform, three times a year, and it is me chasing them up saying, "I haven't heard from you, is everything all right?" It's just that they love it because they can fully manage it themselves and everything they need is there. They have never contacted me and said, "Laurie, I can't do this," or "This is wrong," or "Why can't we do this?"

When a solution works for your business such that you can sign up a customer and you don't need to talk to them, and they're happy, what better rapport is there than that? It blows me away that I have schools that just don't call me (as all communication is via the CYPHER Learning) and that's a good thing. I can then focus on other things and not get bogged down on issues.

And when clients don't ring you, you have no costs. There's no cost to reduce because it has created a sense that you don't need those costs. I have probably reduced costs by 95 percent because I don't have them.

In addition, when it comes to saving money on training facilities or on travel that was involved in training, you almost can't put a price on it. When you physically go and do training out there, you have to charge a minimum of about $1,500 a day, plus flights and everything else, for a class, and that's cheap. There are expenses on top of that such as learning materials. And when you're out teaching you're not doing anything else.

Instead, I can be here and, with the platform working, I can build my business. Instead of working in the business, you're working on the business. And you're not going to be as successful in business if you're continually working in it. If you're a plumber, when you're fixing that person's tap you're not working on your business, you're working in it, and it's never going to grow. This platform allows you to work on your business and let the business evolve. I can take on hundreds of schools and thousands of students with this platform and it won't make any difference to me whatsoever. I don't need extra trainers or classrooms to do so. It's future-proofing where my business is heading.

This platform allows me to supply my niche market better than anyone else can. If it weren't for this platform, I wouldn't have an edge over the other companies. Even if they know what I'm telling you—and they know it—they're still not going to do it because they don't get it.

The main reason I chose this software is the competency-based learning feature that helps make sure the learning is compliant. It's probably the best on the market.

In Australia we have things like performance criteria, knowledge evidence, and performance evidence that we have to map to assist with our compliance. One of the requirements that we needed a system to meet is something that CYPHER Learning has, a feature called mapping. In CYPHER Learning, when you write an assessment or do an activity, you can map it back to those criteria and generate a report for compliance. That report shows that you are covering every point that you need to cover in the training to issue a national qualification. This is one thing that CYPHER Learning does extremely well.

In Australia, when we get audited, they map our training on our potential for how we are going to deliver it. It's called a mapping document. It is fantastic for reporting, and it assists in compliance.

Another thing it does extremely well is that students have a seamless, easy process to follow. The parents can also log in and see what the students are up to. The teachers at the school and the mentors can log in and give advice on assessments. The training coordinators at each public school or private school can log in and see the progress of the students. Each school is able to have its own portal (organisation) where all the school activities are only visible to that school's own students, staff and parents.

Another feature is that it's simple to use.

You are also able to see who has not accessed the portal and follow up with those people. The reporting process is really good. You can click a button and it displays all the dates and you can see the last time that they logged in and you can see exactly what they accessed. The reporting on it is second to none.

There are improvements that are needed and things that they could do a bit differently, and they're all in the suggestions we make. And CYPHER LEARNING will bring them out, but they're only minor things that are focused on the way that I run my business.

One example is the email integration. When we send out an email to a customer that says, "Welcome, here's your enrollment and this is what you do," if it bounces back because that email address is not correct, CYPHER Learning won't tell you that your email bounced back. What I've done, as a result, is set up an external email system where I now get bouncebacks reported to me.

That's not a feature that the program has, but it would be a cool feature if the program did it. Because when you have invited somebody into the system, you're waiting and you're thinking, "This guy, he hasn't logged in," and you can start abusing your customer. Meanwhile, he is saying, "I never got the email." Then you find out that he gave you the wrong email address, but the system doesn't tell you. That's just me being really critical, and it's not disrespecting CYPHER Learning. It's not built as an email program, it's built as a learning management system. That's what they're good at.

Another feature that I would like has to do with the e-commerce side, which is only for one business. In my case, I am a business and different organizations run their own training under my business. The e-commerce is associated with my business. When one of my customers runs training courses, they cannot process the payments through their account, they have to go through my account. It would be helpful if they separated out the e-commerce. Again, that is not a learning management system's problem, it's not e-commerce software, but that would be a cool feature. It's not a negative about the software. It's just me being particular.

I've been using the CYPHER Learning for well over six years. My current business has only been using it for the last two or three years but, in total, I have been using the platform for that long.

It's 100 percent stable. No problems at all. None.

I could quite easily have thousands of students in it and it wouldn't be an issue. It's the only solution that is going to scale with our business. I give 100 percent on scalability.

When you get the guys that really know what they're doing, the support is a 10 out of 10. I'm not going to rate them a nine because they are a 10. You just get that feeling. You get to know the guys that aren't quite on top of things and you just avoid them and go on to the guys who know what they're doing.

You put an issue on the support chat. When some of the guys reply to it, I know what to say and I know when to reply to get the right guy back. About 90 percent of the guys there are brilliant. It's just the new guys who don't understand things as well and struggle a little bit sometimes, but they always get back to you quickly.

Every now and again there are little quirks and bugs, but the support is absolutely brilliant. They'll usually get back to you quite quickly. 

Sometimes they don't understand exactly what I'm saying but that's just because I have one way of explaining it. At the end of the day, not one problem that I've had hasn't been resolved.

And about 80 percent of the issues that I've raised have been due to me not understanding the platform. And that's just been a matter of learning the platform. When you understand it, it is amazing.

There are always improvements that could be made to the platform, but that's just a personal opinion. And every time I have come up with a personal opinion, the support guys have said, "Mate, that's great. Can you log it as a feature request?" Sure enough, people vote on it, and the feature comes out. They're very open to suggestions. I'm a developer myself. When you develop things, you don't know what you don't know. Until you start using it and finding better ways to do something, you just don't know. I've always got suggestions but, in general, looking at all the LMSs out there, this is the best one.

Positive

We were using Talent only because we didn't know this existed. Talent, as a solution, was cheap and cheerful, but it sort of worked. But that was six or seven years ago when it was in its infancy.

For any new platform that you use, you go through a learning curve. This one was probably the easiest to learn. Was it straightforward? No. But it is the easiest platform to learn. Nothing is ever straightforward. When you buy a new car, you've got to learn it. When you buy a new laptop, you've got to learn it.

It has been a learning process but it's more about learning the features and how they work. When you learn them, they are excellent. It's the normal learning curve that you would have with any software, but I promise anybody who takes on this platform that it will be the easiest one to merge into. I'm not saying it's easy but it is the easiest to learn.

One way I evaluate software is that if I cannot work it out in the first couple of hours I'm not going to use it. Because if I can't work it out with my knowledge, how is my staff going to understand it? I was able to work CYPHER Learning very simply in the first hour and my staff picked it up extremely well.

As far as implementing it goes, we made a business decision to slow it down. But you could get this program and have it up and running within three to five working days, very easily. Anybody could adopt it, set up the e-commerce, set up the emails, understand it, and put the courses in. There's no reason why, within a week, you couldn't have a live program up and running, if you're motivated and really determined.

Even though it's priced higher than the cheap and cheerful solutions, the return on investment is going to be phenomenal. It does what you want it to do.

I looked at Blackboard Learning Management, Canvas LMS, TalentLMS, Udemy, and Thinkific. I've also looked at Moodle, which is brilliant, but it doesn't have a good SaaS solution. I wanted something that was managed by other people, whereas with Moodle, you have got to manage the IT yourself.

I have pretty much looked at all the platforms and tried everything. I have been trying out LMSs for the last 10 years or so. By far—and I'm not saying CYPHER Learning is the cheapest, as I can get something cheaper—when I did the price comparison for what you get, six years ago, CYPHER Learning was the best out there and I strongly believe it still is. 

I keep testing other ones and saying to myself, "Oh, I want to try and save some money." But when I look at the other ones they're just not comparable at all. They're great for mum and dad at home who want to sell courses online. But they don't take it to the next level. This solution takes it to the next level. Even McDonald's Australia is using this platform.

In the corporate world—I'm talking about the big end of town, and large training companies—this is the best solution. If mum and dad are working from home and want to do online training, it's probably not the platform for them. It is more of a professional, business-oriented and focused platform, and a platform for schools. It's not for "Ma and Pa Kettle." There are other solutions out there for them. But for the corporate world, and for what we do, it beats anything else on the market, hands-down.

We don't use the solution's automation because of compliance. For compliance, our assessors and trainers have to manually check up on the student. So we don't want it fully automated for that reason. I'm not saying it's not good, I have seen the automations in the system, but we prefer to have a manual process.

Obviously, an issue will always pop up. For every feature that our clients, our schools, have asked for, we have been able to come up with the correct solution on the platform. Not one of my customers has come to me and said, "It can't do this." I've always had a workaround solution for them.

Learning management systems are new to a lot of people. Only during COVID has the industry accepted that physical, classroom-style learning is changing. We've got a new program starting overseas and we're training mining companies in Papua New Guinea, using our platform. They can get the qualifications and come to Australia with them, and that helps them with their visa. A lot of training companies in Australia work on the model of being in a classroom and teaching people. Education training is changing.

We are a training provider and CYPHER Learning is a place for us to put all of the resources for our instructors as well as our participants, past and present.

It has freed up admin time for my team members to do other things that are important. About 50 percent of our training is now asynchronous, whereas when we first purchased CYPHER Learning, we were 100 percent synchronous. It has allowed us to repurpose and reuse content. In that way, from a business provider point of view, we actually make income off of stuff we're repurposing. It's passive income, and that has been very helpful. And through surveys as well as through other organizations, we've tracked that there is actually no difference in the retention rate and in the outcomes of those who learn via asynchronous or synchronous, so that's been really helpful.

When it comes to costs, we have several textbooks that we've created and other resources that we used to have to print and send by mail. Now, we can house everything as an ebook or a PDF on CYPHER Learning. We've cut out printing and shipping costs. And the big thing is that as soon as the participant enrolls, they have access to everything. That's a nice feature. It's set up so that when they make a purchase, they're automatically put in. There's no delay for someone to get started or have access to the information. When we started our business 12 years ago, there was a delay because of shipping and the admin. We also used to mail certificates when people were done with the training, but they can be generated automatically, so we don't have to mail or print those either.

Before we put all of our resources into the system, just mailing and printing cost over $50,000 a year. That's not in our budget anymore; there's no need for it.

And when COVID hit, we were ahead of the game because most of our competitors didn't have something like CYPHER Learning. We didn't miss a beat. We just took everything that was going to be in-person or onsite and moved it to our LMS using Zoom and some other platforms. Everything was already there for everybody.

In addition, we used to have our own shopping cart but then we learned that the platform actually has a shopping cart, so we were able to eliminate ours and that just streamlined the whole process for us. That has been a really nice feature.

The solution is in the cloud and that's one of the reasons we wanted it. We are a coach training organization, so anyone that is involved with our organization, the participants or faculty, can have access 24/7 as long as they have internet. The resources are housed there and it's password protected, which is nice. We also put attendance there, as well as videos because we have synchronous and asynchronous materials, so it provides us and our participants with access to everything, 24/7, wherever anyone is.

It's also pretty user-friendly. While they have all kinds of documents you can read, I've never read them. My admin team has read them, but I just logged in and was able to figure it out.

It also cuts down on admin time because past participants, instead of having to contact one of our team members, can go directly in and get their information.

In addition, the rules engine helps personalize content for users based on their goals and performance. That's very important because we want things to be very specific to our program and what we're offering.

It tells us when participants most recently accessed it and that's a nice feature. It does allow us, when people say, "I can't find anything," to see if they have logged in and say, "Well, you have to log in to find anything." And with our self-paced, asynchronous learning, the way CYPHER Learning is set up, participants have to watch the first video in its entirety before they can move forward to the next one. And we've had people that say, "Hey, I can't figure this out. It's not working well," but they haven't actually watched the videos entirely. I've never said this to anybody, but we've "caught" them trying to skim through.

It's very easy to monitor and check student progress. I can go in and, with a couple of clicks, see any participant and where they are in the process.

What we've been asking them for recently is that, while we really appreciate the shopping cart, it doesn't have a recurring payment charge. A lot of our participants, instead of paying the full fee, spread it out over several months and that feature is not there yet. CYPHER LEARNING said they would look into it. Typically, when we have made requests, it takes a while, but they'll research them and then make the improvements. 

I have been using CYPHER Learning for 10 years or more.

In all the years we've been with CYPHER Learning it has been there, and I don't get any hints that it won't be there. It has always been consistent and they've always been helpful. I wouldn't expect any changes that way.

From our experience, the scalability appears to be excellent. They have been scaling things up and adding things. It's more on us to take the time to look at what's there. For example, they have gamification, but we just haven't had the time to touch that. But it's there. It's ready to go if we want to use and incorporate it. 

We have about 250 users, including both students and trainers, but most of them would be students, past and present.

It is being extensively used by our instructors and administrative team, as well as by people when they first enroll. Once they enroll, they download everything they need, which is a nice feature too. And then we find that they access it once they've graduated, just to refresh themselves. We do notice a type of a drop-off once they've started the program. It seems like they have gotten everything and they're not in there a whole lot afterward, which is okay. That means they got what they needed.

We didn't have a previous solution.

Ten years ago the initial setup was pretty straightforward. Now, there are a lot more options, so you have to read the directions for the setup or contact their help desk. 

But once it was set up, when it came to the shopping cart and some of the asynchronous aspects, we just had to ask and then we understood, "Oh, that's how you do it." It's kind of like today's cars. You can't really do much more yourself than change the oil and kick the tires, but we like all those extra options.

We did it in-house. Even with all the bells and whistles today, you can do it in-house, as long as when you get stuck, you ask for help.

We have absolutely seen ROI. What we pay each year for CYPHER Learning is a drop in the bucket. Just the ability to set up self-paced classes has generated a nice income right there alone. I'm not ready to retire, but I could almost retire just on that income.

The main reason we went for it was cost, which was very reasonable. 

And what I like about the pricing is that you are only charged for what they label "active participants." They charge you monthly and, on average, we have 250 people that access the platform every month. We have many more than that, as far as students and participants go, but the others just didn't access it that month. If someone goes in once a month, you get charged for that person.

I believe there are pricing tiers as well.

Before we started with CYPHER Learning, we looked all around, but it offered a lot more, by far, and the price was the best. I regularly get flyers, information, and emails about other products just like this. I check them out and the price is a lot more and, in many cases, they're not offering as much in terms of those bells and whistles.

Based on other LMSs I've experienced, as I do continuing education, ours is right up there if not ahead, in terms of usability and what's offered.

Do your due diligence, look around, and explore. If you do a comparison, you'll very quickly see. There are a lot of features we don't use, but we don't feel like we're paying for them because it's a competitive price. We've been very happy with it.