CYPHER Learning Reviews

We use it for employee training.

It has helped us in moving to digital training sessions from in-person training sessions and that has reduced our costs. We used to spend around $15,000 to $20,000 annually on training.

And indirectly, it has helped increase profits by improving the efficiency of our employees. That benefits our business.

The most valuable feature is the gamification of the training courses. Learners can compete with their colleagues and access the leaderboard, and this enhances our efficiency and our learners' creativity. The employees can also compete with their colleagues and they get awards and badges, which motivates them.

We also like the automation features because it makes the training interesting and interactive.

And the competency-based learning helps teams acquire the desired skills. It displays the available skills and puts an emphasis on progressing on what the employee lacks. The competency-based learning systems that we have created are very important. Before, we were using Talent Elements and the reason we shifted to CYPHER Learning was because of this feature. They are the reason for buying this product. Competency-based learning helps us certify the skills of learners and make decisions about promotions and redundancy.

CYPHER Learning's ability to recommend courses to learners based on their job title or set of competencies is great and helps the employees a lot. It's like a non-financial reward for them to keep them motivated.

The mobile app has quite a lot of bugs and it has many fewer integration options.

I've been using CYPHER Learning for two years.

The platform is very reliable.

It's scalable as well.

The support team is great but it takes them some time to answer queries. Also, because the support chat box is integrated into the website, we actually can't open two different tabs, one for customer support and another for the product. We have to open the customer chat box inside the solution and it can be quite confusing. It would be better if we could get email or phone support.

Positive

Previously, we used Talent Elements. In addition to the lack of competency-based learning, in which there were only a few ways to track learner progress, there were relatively few gamification features.

Our return on investment is in the improvement of our efficiency and productivity.

It's affordable, but they have doubled the pricing at random times. That's a problem. They have to change that for forecasting purposes.

I strongly suggest changing your training solution to CYPHER Learning. If you are doing it on your campus right now, this will help you save costs.

It is my work platform for every single use case at the school.

The task system in CYPHER Learning provides a tool that helps us improve as an institute. We can see the progress report of each student in a general way. By watching the progress of all students, we can receive transparent feedback.

It helped us facilitate critical thinking. This is important because it facilitates the individual commitment and autonomy of the student in their learning. For example, I upload different materials, both audiovisual or visual, then the student can order their own material according to their own learning rhythm. It is also able to create it in a way that is not boring.

CYPHER Learning has a high capacity to work with a range of learning styles and rhythms. It was friendly and didactic enough to be able to adapt to the COVID situation. I keep my jobs and projects uploaded through CYPHER Learning. I also do this for my face-to-face classes.

The solution has given the rest of the technical team more time for other functions within the educational center. There are only two people dedicated to CYPHER Learning. Administratively, this reduces the cost of expenses and personnel. It has been good for distributing personnel into other technical information management functions.

I can share the learning experience with a variety of people. I have had the opportunity to do it through a video call and a phone call as well as through audio, images or files that I can send. The diversity of educational styles is something fascinating.

We use CYPHER Learning for automation and adaptive learning purposes. It seems to me that the service it provides is a nine out of ten.

The solution’s competency-based learning is very good. Its planning and presentation are good. I would give it an eight or nine out of ten because it facilitates the personal organization of students.

In general, it is easy for educators to communicate with students using CYPHER Learning.

It adapts to the various study and learning abilities of my students.

CYPHER Learning's adaptive learning for helping provide students personalized content based on their goals and performance varies since they could provide the student with a pre-entry message or a type of login board menu so the student could access the specific information that they want. In this area, I would give it a seven out of ten.

The training of teachers should be simpler. There are some teachers who are not using these platforms to communicate. Instead, they are using it for uploading material since they are not very technological and the training wasn't easy for them.

While the solution’s gamified learning environment facilitates critical thinking and encourages self-learning, it could be improved by creating an online evaluation strategy for students when they work on a specific topic.

It has room for improvement in the areas of presentation and ease of use. I would like them to make the options clearer and more approachable for a student. They could create a training platform to give direction. I would also like a friendlier alert message regarding the activities that you have to develop.

The parents' training was not adequate. Parents say that it wasn't user-friendly for them. It is important to take this into account. Also, CYPHER Learning could do more advertising on its YouTube channel for free videos so parents feel more involved.

I have been using it for two and a half years.

We have only had one difficulty, and that was in August of last year. The platform simply froze. They did not inform me what the problem was, but told me it was from CYPHER Learning's side, I do not know exactly what happened.

In our school, we have a divided impression on the platform. A part of the staff prefers something simpler. They do not handle technology as the main means of teaching, while other staff see it as more feasible because it provides us a more personalized means of education. It favors administrative work, but some staff say that it increases their administrative work.

We have 1,500 students, 250 teachers, and five people on the technical team.

CYPHER Learning's team has been a bit distant this year. Sometimes, the representatives of the institute in charge of CYPHER Learning give us faster answers. Whereas, consultations with CYPHER Learning usually take eight to 10 days.

I would give it a seven out of 10. I have not personally dealt with customer service, but I have heard of a lack of communication that happens at the institution level.

Neutral

We previously used Seeweb, which is a communications platform. It was very simple, but we saw slower learning and skill development with students.

CYPHER Learning is much better in terms of profitability by up to 90%. CYPHER Learning facilitates a group to have easy accessibility. It is also much friendlier. 

The implementation, presentation, management, and introduction to the tools were all simple. I have experience in the use of platforms, so it seemed simple.

Our deployment took a week.

Our implementation strategy was mostly creating feedback amongst the whole team. We manifested different topics, such as uploading tasks. Thus, we discovered faster group strategies to use the platform.

There was a consultant from CYPHER Learning who trained three people in our institution to have continuous service in case any difficulties arose. My experience with him was very good. He was very nice and practical with his answers. Although, I would have liked him to send me more video tutorials or material to read.

We needed three people: a technician and two administrative people.

It has helped me save a lot of time when working with students with special abilities. I have saved 75% of time with its easy presentation of material.

It has 100% helped me organize my time. It provides more time for interaction and feedback with my students, both in the classroom or personally. This is why I consider the solution as an achievement. It feels more collaborative in the sense that planning not only depends on me, but also on my students.

It has helped us save from 90% to 100% of our costs. The most valuable thing that we have earned in the last three years is time, e.g., my personal time versus my work time. There is more harmony.

Go into schools who are using it. Ask both adult and student users to get an idea of how feasible the product has been for them.

Understand that any investment made in CYPHER Learning will be successful.

This year, our usage of CYPHER Learning has been reduced by 60% since we returned to face-to-face education. Our usage projection going forward will depend on this year's evaluations and final exams.

Biggest lesson learnt: How organized time can be.

I would rate this solution as eight out of ten.

Foreign Language: (Spanish)

¿Cuál es nuestra razón de uso principal?

Es mi plataforma de trabajo para cada uso en la escuela.

¿Cómo ha ayudado a mi organización?

El sistema de tareas en CYPHER Learning proporciona una herramienta que nos ayuda a mejorar como instituto. Podemos recibir un informe de progreso de cada alumno. Al observar el progreso de todos los estudiantes, podemos recibir retroalimentación transparente.

Nos ha ayudado a facilitar el pensamiento crítico. Esto es importante porque facilita el compromiso individual y la autonomía del alumno en su aprendizaje. Por ejemplo, subo diferentes materiales, tanto audiovisuales como visuales, luego el alumno puede ordenar su propio material de acuerdo a su propio ritmo de aprendizaje y también da la opción de crearlo de una manera que no sea aburrida.

CYPHER Learning tiene una alta capacidad para trabajar con una variedad de estilos y ritmos de aprendizaje. Fue lo suficientemente amigable y didáctico para poder adaptarse a la situación del COVID. Mantengo mis trabajos y proyectos subidos a través de CYPHER Learning, también usó estos recursos para mis clases presenciales.

La solución ha dado al resto del equipo técnico más tiempo para otras funciones dentro del centro educativo. Solo hay dos personas dedicadas a CYPHER Learning. Administrativamente, esto reduce el costo de los gastos y el personal. Ha sido bueno para distribuir personal en otras funciones de gestión de informática.

¿Qué es lo más valioso?

Puedo compartir la experiencia de aprendizaje con una variedad de estudiantes simultáneamente. Tengo diferentes formas de hacerlo, por ejemplo, a través de una videollamada, de una llamada telefónica así como a través de audios, imágenes o archivos que puedo enviar. La diversidad de estilos educativos a través de esta plataforma es algo fascinante.

Usamos CYPHER Learning con fines de automatización y aprendizaje adaptativo. Me parece que el servicio que da es un 9 sobre 10.

El aprendizaje basado en competencias de la solución es muy bueno. Su planificación y presentación son buenas. Le daría un 8 o 9 sobre 10 porque facilita la organización personal de los alumnos.

En general, es fácil para los educadores comunicarse con los estudiantes usando CYPHER Learning.

Se adapta a las diversas capacidades de estudio y aprendizaje de mis alumnos.

¿Qué necesita mejorar?

El aprendizaje adaptativo de CYPHER Learning para ayudar a proporcionar a los estudiantes contenido personalizado en función de sus objetivos y rendimiento varía, ya que podrían proporcionar al estudiante un mensaje previo al inicio de sesión o un tipo de menú de tablero de bienvenida para que el estudiante pueda acceder a la información específica que desea. En este apartado le daría un 7 sobre 10.

La formación de los profesores debería ser más sencilla. Hay algunos profesores que no están usando estas plataformas para comunicarse. En cambio, lo están usando para subir material ya que no son muy tecnológicos y la capacitación no les resultó fácil.

Si bien el entorno de aprendizaje gamificado de la solución facilita el pensamiento crítico y fomenta el autoaprendizaje, podría mejorarse creando una estrategia de evaluación en línea para los estudiantes cuando trabajan en un tema específico.

Podría mejorar en las áreas de presentación y facilidad de uso. Me gustaría que hicieran las opciones más claras y accesibles para el estudiante. Podrían crear una plataforma de tutoriales para dar dirección. También me gustaría un mensaje de alerta más amigable con respecto a las actividades que los estudiantes deben desarrollar.

La formación de los padres no fue tampoco adecuada. Los padres dicen que no fue fácil de usar para ellos. Es importante tener esto en cuenta. Además, CYPHER Learning podría hacer más publicidad en su canal de YouTube subiendo videos gratuitos para que los padres se sientan más involucrados.

¿Por cuánto tiempo he usado la solución?

Lo he estado usando durante dos años y medio.

¿Qué pienso sobre la estabilidad de la solución?

Solo hemos tenido una dificultad, y eso fue en agosto del año pasado. La plataforma simplemente quedó congelada. No me informaron cuál era el problema de manera específica, pero me dijeron que era de parte de CYPHER Learning, no sé exactamente qué pasó.

¿Qué opino de la escalabilidad de la solución?

En nuestra escuela, tenemos una impresión dividida sobre la plataforma. Una parte del personal preferiría algo más simple. No manejan la tecnología como principal medio de enseñanza, mientras que otros miembros del personal lo ven más factible porque les brinda un medio de educación más personalizado y favorece el trabajo administrativo, algunos funcionarios dicen lo contrario, que aumenta su trabajo administrativo.

Contamos con 1.500 alumnos, 250 docentes y 5 personas en el equipo técnico.

¿Cómo son el servicio de atención al cliente y el soporte?

El equipo de CYPHER Learning ha estado un poco distante este año. A veces, los representantes en el instituto que están a cargo de CYPHER Learning nos dan respuestas más rápidas. Mientras que las consultas con CYPHER Learning suelen tardar entre 8 y 10 días.

Le daría un 7 de 10. No he tratado personalmente con el servicio al cliente, pero he oído hablar de una falta de comunicación que sucede a nivel de la institución.

¿Cómo calificaría el servicio y soporte al cliente?

Neutral

¿Qué solución usé anteriormente y por qué cambié?

Anteriormente usábamos Seeweb, que es una plataforma de comunicaciones. Era muy simple, pero vimos un aprendizaje y desarrollo de habilidades más lento con los estudiantes.

CYPHER Learning es mucho mejor en términos de rentabilidad hasta en un 90%. CYPHER Learning facilita que un grupo tenga fácil accesibilidad y también es mucho más amigable.

¿Cómo fue la configuración inicial?

La implementación, presentación, gestión e introducción a las herramientas fue sencilla. Tengo experiencia en el uso de plataformas, así que me pareció sencillo.

Nuestro despliegue tomó una semana.

Nuestra estrategia de implementación consistía principalmente en crear comentarios entre todo el equipo sobre el uso de la plataforma. Manifestamos diferentes temas, como la carga de tareas. Por lo tanto, descubrimos estrategias grupales más rápidas para usar la plataforma.

¿Y el equipo de implementación?

Hubo un consultor de CYPHER Learning que capacitó a tres personas de nuestra institución para tener un servicio continuo en caso de que surgieran dificultades. Mi experiencia con él fue muy buena. Fue muy amable y práctico con sus respuestas. Aunque, me hubiera gustado que me enviara más videotutoriales o material para leer.

En general requerimos de tres personas: un técnico y dos administrativos.

¿Cuál fue nuestro Retorno De Inversión?

Me ha ayudado a ahorrar mucho tiempo cuando trabajo con estudiantes con habilidades especiales. He ahorrado el 75% del tiempo con su fácil presentación del material.

Me ha ayudado al 100% a organizar mi tiempo. Brinda más tiempo para la interacción y la retroalimentación con mis alumnos, tanto en el aula como personalmente. Por eso considero la solución como un logro. Se siente más colaborativo en el sentido de que la planificación no solo depende de mí, sino también de mis alumnos.

Nos ha ayudado a ahorrar del 90% al 100% de nuestros costos. Lo más valioso que hemos podido ahorrar exitosamente en los últimos tres años es el tiempo, por ejemplo, mi tiempo personal versus mi tiempo de trabajo. Ahora hay más armonía.

¿Qué otro consejo tengo?

Antes de usar el producto diríjase a los centros educativos que lo estén usando. Pida tanto a los docentes como a los estudiantes que le den una idea de lo factible que ha sido el producto para ellos.

Cualquier inversión que hagas en CYPHER Learning será exitosa.

Este año, nuestro uso de CYPHER Learning se ha reducido en un 60 % desde que volvimos a la educación presencial. Nuestra proyección de uso en el futuro dependerá de las evaluaciones y exámenes finales de este año.

Mi mayor lección aprendida usando CYPHER Learning fue aprender a organizar mi tiempo de la mejor manera.

Calificaría esta plataforma con un 8 de 10.

At the university where I work, we use the platform for everything related to undergraduate training. This is for the 30 career paths that we have at the university for approximately 5,000 students.

Right now, CYPHER Learning is being applied at the undergraduate level, but we are planning to increase and migrate it to the university level.

At the pedagogical level, we have applied a cascade strategy. They gave all teachers three weeks to learn how to use CYPHER Learning in the midst of the pandemic. So, we selected one to two teachers to be trained with CYPHER Learning and represent each of the careers, then they replicated that training to approximately 15 teachers each. This way, teachers in the same area trained their colleagues.

Our previous platform had forums, but CYPHER Learning has been able to help a lot with this. For example, I use the discussion and debate manual with students who usually are not very participatory but very critical and analytic in the platform. That is how I discovered that these are very good students. These activities are quite meaningful because students have greatly appreciated the use of the platform, which provides them with a certain order. Also, teachers can give them direct feedback, comments, and even voice notes on the platform.

CYPHER Learning has allowed all our teachers to conduct more actions, and each action can be handled at the teacher's convenience.

I like that you can choose your home screen widget. We have a centralized calendar that sends a reminder to students about tasks that are due.

The truth is that the organization of the platform helps me a lot. I have been able to identify students in the classroom who may need a little more time to present work. CYPHER Learning allows me to extend the dates of a task’s presentation, while I can leave the same date for other students. The flexibility of having a task hidden, or where I can provide a new space so they wont lose points, is quite useful. This way, the university is more considerate of students who take more time to learn.

I find the automation and adaptive learning purposes of CYPHER Learning quite interesting. However, we haven't been shown much about the automation menu. This year, there was an update with the widgets. It seems to me that it can be used quite well as soon as they inform us. Our students used it autonomously, but not everyone has seen the benefits. As a teacher, I have had to personalize the functions on the panel and its synchronization. Without having explored it, I would not have seen the importance.

There is improvement needed in regards to notifications for updates. I don't know if it is the responsibility of the university and its administration or making adjustments to CYPHER Learning's communication, such as having a message about updates on the platform. 

We don't receive any notifications about updates to the solution's adaptive learning. We find out when it is already there in the solution.

The gamification option is a section that we have not learned because we have not been able to specify a training space for the use of this gamification tab. However, it would be good to have training and learn about how to use it.

It is super easy to be able to locate my students and send them a message. I just can't send a message to all my students, as it doesn't allow me to send messages through an email list. The search engine for people is a bit more complicated than gmail.

I have been using it since August 2020.

There have been two moments where CYPHER Learning failed us a bit. One was due to an update that took two hours and another that took ten minutes. After that, we haven't had any major problems.

We are the only university in the country using CYPHER Learning as a platform. It is a fairly complete platform that allows teachers to have a new experience within a new space. Thanks to this solution, teachers are prepared to use different types of platforms.

We have 510 teachers and 5,000 students at our headquarters. We have a monitor role, which allows us to enter teacher subjects or enter the student profiles to see their progress. There is also an administrator role which allows us to do modifications to different platforms. At the headquarters level, there are about 30 people who do monitoring and only one administrator.

Whenever I have had a doubt, I accessed the forums and FAQ. In most cases, it gave me the answers. I have realized that a lot depends on the administrator and his actions. In general, the forum has helped me a lot.

I would rate the customer service/technical support for this solution as 10 out of 10.

Positive

We used to have Moodle, which is a better-known platform, but we had an out-of-date version. With CYPHER Learning, we massively updated right in the middle of the pandemic and were able to organize all our subjects.

When we previously had Moodle, a teacher had to request that their space would be created on the platform, as it was not mandatory, and between 15% to 20% of the subjects were used as a repository for information. Whereas, since the pandemic and deploying CYPHER Learning, it has become an obligation. The university has established that the use of CYPHER Learning is mandatory. Therefor, every time academic programming is done for each semester, all teachers (by default) already have their subject created and students admitted to CYPHER Learning, Administratively, this has helped us a lot because they already link the university's programming with CYPHER Learning, so students who have signed up for a subject appear in the system.

Since July 2020, we have been training all teachers and conducting follow-ups for each subject. As every semester passes, we continue to show the platform to new teachers. So far, we have had between a 65% to 70% implementation of CYPHER Learning.

We have rubrics for all the teachers. Their learning units and sections are all created in them. With these rubrics, we check the level of teachers, then we send feedback to each of the teachers via email.

When we started the training, they taught us the initial configurations. It did not seem complicated to me. Now that we have the qualification tables, which we requested not to be modified, it seems much easier.

We already had some university staff who were in charge of all the teachers. However, due to the implementation of CYPHER Learning, we had to ask for help from a consultant. The consultant has helped us a lot. He has divided the work between the staff, making tasks easier.

At the national level, the technology coordinator has two people at his headquarters, then he has one person at each branch. There should be six people total at the national level.

CYPHER Learning has helped save me about 40% of my time on intervention strategies for students, especially those who need guidance. There are a lot of teachers who always teach the same subject, so they can modify aspects based on a student’s need. It provides automatic feedback as well as the ability to attach documents and videos, which can be very helpful.

CYPHER Learning has helped us save on costs related to printing materials and textbook acquisitions. For example, we have a library department that has been able to include eBooks in CYPHER Learning. We, as teachers, have had the opportunity to have the latest editions of books, and you can only access those eBooks from our platform. The presentation of work through the platform also helps us a lot in saving on paper.

CYPHER Learning is a bit more expensive than our previous solution.

We evaluated Blackboard and checked out the latest versions of Moodle.

Before using the training that the platform offers you, have a meeting with the mentors about the main needs of your institution. Each university is different and managed differently. It was difficult for us to understand how the basic training translates to what we specifically needed because CYPHER Learning is very big. For the first time, I would advise the formation and implementation processes of the platform to be in consensus with the main entities of the institution.

In general, a gamified learning environment depends a lot on the teacher's usage. I have been able to share material and include external activities, which can be carried out with a SCORM as well as do other activities.

Before, the platform was optional and not mandatory. Therefore, the task of monitoring has increased with this solution.

I believe that asynchrony has allowed me to create spaces that are not only in obligatory synchronous spaces, such as physical classes. I have had contact with my students outside class hours, being able to provide direct feedback and organize their ideas. I can know when they have completed tasks without seeing them personally. This has been one of the best lessons and treasures of this platform.

It is very useful when learning to exploit all CYPHER Learning's tools.

I would rate this solution as 8.5 out of 10.

Foreign Language: (Spanish)

¿Cuál es nuestra razón de uso principal?

En la universidad donde trabajo usamos la plataforma para todo lo relacionado con la formación de pregrado. Esto es para las 30 carreras que tenemos en la universidad para aproximadamente 5,000 estudiantes.

En este momento, CYPHER Learning se está aplicando a nivel de pregrado, pero estamos planeando aumentarlo y migrarlo a nivel universitario.

¿Cómo ha ayudado a mi organización?

A nivel pedagógico hemos aplicado una estrategia en cascada. Les dieron a todos los maestros tres semanas para aprender a usar CYPHER Learning en medio de la pandemia. Entonces, seleccionamos uno o dos maestros para capacitarse con CYPHER Learning y representar cada una de las carreras, luego replicaron esa capacitación a aproximadamente 15 maestros cada uno. De esta forma, los docentes de la misma área capacitaban a sus colegas.

Nuestra plataforma anterior tenía foros, pero CYPHER Learning ha podido ayudar mucho con esto. Por ejemplo, utilizo el manual de discusión y debate con alumnos que suelen ser poco participativos pero sí muy críticos y analíticos en la plataforma. Así descubrí que estos son muy buenos estudiantes. Estas actividades son bastante significativas porque los alumnos han valorado mucho el uso de la plataforma, que les proporciona cierto orden. Además, los profesores pueden darles retroalimentación directa, comentarios e incluso notas de voz en la plataforma.

¿Qué es lo más valioso?

CYPHER Learning ha permitido que todos nuestros maestros realicen más acciones, y cada acción se puede manejar a la conveniencia del maestro.

Me gusta que puedas elegir tu widget de pantalla de inicio. Tenemos un calendario centralizado que envía un recordatorio a los estudiantes sobre las tareas que vencen.

La verdad es que la organización de la plataforma me ayuda mucho. He podido identificar estudiantes en el salón de clases que pueden necesitar un poco más de tiempo para presentar el trabajo. CYPHER Learning me permite extender las fechas de presentación de una tarea, mientras que puedo dejar la misma fecha para otros estudiantes. La flexibilidad de tener una tarea oculta, o donde puedo proporcionar un nuevo espacio para que no pierdan puntos, es bastante útil. De esta manera, la universidad es más considerada con los estudiantes que les toma más tiempo aprender.

¿Qué necesita mejorar?

Encuentro bastante interesantes los propósitos de automatización y aprendizaje adaptativo de CYPHER Learning. Sin embargo, no se nos ha mostrado mucho sobre el menú de automatización. Este año hubo una actualización con los widgets. Me parece que se puede utilizar bastante bien en cuanto nos informen. Nuestros alumnos lo usaron de forma autónoma, pero no todos han visto los beneficios. Como profesora he tenido que personalizar las funciones del panel y su sincronización. Sin haberlo explorado, no habría visto la importancia.

Se necesita una mejora en lo que respecta a las notificaciones de actualizaciones. No sé si es responsabilidad de la universidad y su administración o hacer ajustes en la comunicación de CYPHER Learning, como tener un mensaje sobre actualizaciones en la plataforma.

No recibimos ninguna notificación sobre actualizaciones del aprendizaje adaptativo de la solución. Descubrimos cuando ya está allí en la solución.

La opción de gamificación es un apartado que no hemos aprendido porque no hemos podido concretar un espacio de formación para el uso de esta pestaña de gamificación. Sin embargo, sería bueno tener capacitación y aprender sobre cómo usarlo.

Es súper fácil poder localizar a mis alumnos y enviarles un mensaje. Aunque no puedo enviar un mensaje a todos mis alumnos, ya que no me permite enviar mensajes a través de una lista de correo electrónico. El buscador de personas es un poco más complicado que gmail.

¿Por cuánto tiempo he usado la solución?

Lo uso desde agosto de 2020.

¿Qué pienso sobre la estabilidad de la solución?

Han habido dos momentos en los que CYPHER Learning nos ha fallado un poco. Uno se debió a una actualización que tardó dos horas y otro que tardó diez minutos. Después de eso, no hemos tenido ningún problema importante.

¿Qué opino de la escalabilidad de la solución?

Somos la única universidad del país que utiliza CYPHER Learning como plataforma. Es una plataforma bastante completa que permite a los docentes tener una nueva experiencia dentro de un nuevo espacio. Gracias a esta solución, los docentes están preparados para utilizar diferentes tipos de plataformas.

Contamos con 510 docentes y 5.000 alumnos en nuestra sede. Tenemos un rol de monitor, que nos permite ingresar a las asignaturas del profesor o ingresar a los perfiles de los alumnos para ver su progreso. También hay un rol de administrador que nos permite hacer modificaciones a diferentes plataformas. A nivel de sede hay unas 30 personas que hacen el seguimiento y un solo administrador.

¿Cómo es el servicio de atención al cliente y el soporte?

Siempre que he tenido una duda he accedido a los foros y la sección de preguntas frecuentes. En la mayoría de los casos, me da las respuestas. Me he dado cuenta de que mucho depende del administrador y sus acciones. En general, el foro me ha ayudado mucho.

Calificaría el servicio de atención al cliente/soporte técnico para esta solución con un 10 de 10.

¿Cómo calificaría el servicio y soporte al cliente?

Positivo.

¿Qué solución usé anteriormente y por qué cambié?

Solíamos tener Moodle, que es una plataforma más conocida, pero teníamos una versión desactualizada. Con CYPHER Learning, actualizamos masivamente justo en medio de la pandemia y pudimos organizar todos nuestros temas.

Cuando antes teníamos Moodle, un docente tenía que solicitar que se creara su espacio en la plataforma, ya que no era obligatorio, y entre el 15% y el 20% de las asignaturas lo utilizaban como repositorio de información. Desde la pandemia y el despliegue de CYPHER Learning, se ha convertido en una obligación. La universidad ha establecido que el uso de CYPHER Learning es obligatorio. Por lo tanto, cada vez que se hace la programación académica de cada semestre, todos los docentes (por defecto) ya tienen su materia creada y los estudiantes admitidos en CYPHER Learning, Administrativamente esto nos ha ayudado mucho porque ya vinculan la programación de la universidad con CYPHER Learning, entonces los estudiantes que se han apuntado a una asignatura aparecen automáticamente en el sistema.

¿Cómo fue la configuración inicial?

Desde julio de 2020, estamos capacitando a todos los docentes y realizando seguimientos para cada materia. Como cada semestre pasa, seguimos mostrando la plataforma a los nuevos docentes. Hasta ahora, hemos tenido entre un 65% y un 70% de implementación de CYPHER Learning.

Tenemos rúbricas para todos los profesores. En ellos se crean todas sus unidades de aprendizaje y secciones. Con estas rúbricas, verificamos el nivel de los maestros y luego enviamos comentarios a cada uno de los maestros por correo electrónico.

¿Y el equipo de implementación?

Cuando comenzamos el entrenamiento, nos enseñaron las configuraciones iniciales. No me pareció complicado. Ahora que tenemos las tablas de clasificación, que solicitamos que no se modifiquen, parece mucho más fácil.

Ya teníamos algunos funcionarios de la universidad que estaban a cargo de todos los maestros. Sin embargo, debido a la implementación de CYPHER Learning, tuvimos que pedir ayuda a un consultor. El consultor nos ha ayudado mucho. Ha repartido el trabajo entre la plantilla, facilitando las tareas.

A nivel nacional el coordinador de tecnología tiene dos personas en su sede, luego tiene una persona en cada sucursal. Deben haber seis personas en total a nivel nacional.

¿Cuál fue nuestro retorno de inversión?

CYPHER Learning me ha ayudado a ahorrar alrededor del 40 % de mi tiempo en estrategias de intervención para estudiantes, especialmente para aquellos que necesitan orientación. Hay muchos profesores que siempre enseñan la misma materia, por lo que pueden modificar aspectos en función de la necesidad del alumno. Proporciona retroalimentación automática, así como la capacidad de adjuntar documentos y videos, lo que puede ser muy útil.

CYPHER Learning nos ha ayudado a ahorrar en costos relacionados con materiales de impresión y adquisición de libros de texto. Por ejemplo, tenemos un departamento de biblioteca que ha podido incluir libros electrónicos en CYPHER Learning. Nosotros, como docentes, hemos tenido la oportunidad de contar con las últimas ediciones de libros, y solo puedes acceder a esos eBooks desde nuestra plataforma. La presentación de trabajos a través de la plataforma también nos ayuda mucho en el ahorro de papel.

¿Cuál es mi experiencia con los precios, el costo de configuración y las licencias?

CYPHER Learning es un poco más caro que nuestra solución anterior.

¿Qué otras soluciones evaluaron?

Evaluamos Blackboard y comprobamos las últimas versiones de Moodle.

¿Qué otro consejo tengo?

Antes de utilizar la capacitación que te ofrece la plataforma, ten una reunión con los mentores sobre las principales necesidades de tu institución. Cada universidad es diferente y se administra de manera diferente. Fue difícil para nosotros entender cómo se traduce el entrenamiento básico en lo que necesitábamos específicamente porque CYPHER Learning es muy grande. Para la primera vez, recomendaría que los procesos de formación e implementación de la plataforma sean consensuados con las principales entidades de la institución.

En general, un entorno de aprendizaje gamificado depende mucho del uso que haga el profesor. He podido compartir material e incluir actividades externas, que se pueden realizar con un SCORM así como hacer otras actividades.

Antes, la plataforma era opcional y no obligatoria. Por lo tanto, la tarea de monitoreo se ha incrementado con esta solución.

Creo que la asincronía me ha permitido crear espacios que no son solo espacios de sincronía obligatoria, como las clases físicas. He tenido contacto con mis alumnos fuera del horario de clases, pudiendo retroalimentarnos directamente y organizar sus ideas. Puedo saber cuándo han completado las tareas sin verlos personalmente. Esta ha sido una de las mejores lecciones y tesoros de esta plataforma.

Es muy útil a la hora de aprender a explotar todas las herramientas de CYPHER Learning.

Calificaría esta solución como 8.5 de 10.

When we are engaged in an agreement with a school district, we will create their organization on the platform and customize it. There is a portal that we can customize with their logo, images, and colors. These are our own clients, so I am using the platform as if I own the platform. There are a lot of different features and things that I can customize for our clients. So, we create their organization, then we copy our master courses into their organization. We then meet with their principals and devise an action plan for how the district will use the courses that we offer.

Some of the schools within the district will use the courses as online self-paced learning. Some of them will use it as an online textbook. Thus, the teachers use the courses and facilitate the learning from our courses on the platform with their students. Some students will create accounts where they will have accounts in the platform and access our courses as they go through the CYPHER Learning platform.

One of the things that we are really excited about is being able to tie the state or national standards as competencies. Then, when students complete a course, they are awarded certain competencies or standards that we have aligned with the course. This shows schools evidence that students are meeting standards. Right now, we are not tying any of our courses with how schools are testing and assessing students. However, our company goals are to provide access to STEM for all students and help schools engage with communities to develop the STEM talent and workforce, which then impacts a community's economic development.

Our metrics will be students being exposed to STEM. I love that I can see how many students have completed courses as well as what that means on our end in terms of their exposure and experiences in STEM. It ties different metrics to our understanding of students' progress. We can understand, from the percentage of students in an entire school district, how many have been exposed or completed courses. This is really attractive to our clients. Therefore, this helps us develop our client base.

I love their help center. 

I just love the accessibility of being able to edit all the courses at once by editing the master course. 

I love the catalog feature. 

I love the support. 

They have gamification elements, and I love the gamification. We can add points to student assessments. We can also add badges, so students can earn badges. This makes them more motivated to continue learning. 

We can create certificates. There are student portfolios that schools love. Students can have a portfolio of all these credentials and badges that they have earned over their educational journey. 

We can see who has accessed the portal, if they are using it, and the student's progress. We schedule check-ins, where we can say, "Hey, we see you haven't been able to look at the courses yet or log in. Is there anything that is holding you back?" 

I have one team member who is in charge of monitoring and checking students' progress. She is very tech savvy and has really dove into the reporting feature in CYPHER Learning. If I had one complaint, it would be the reporting. It is so robust and detailed that it is hard to obtain some of the specific things that we want. That has been her response to me, and I have found the same thing. If I just want to know how many students have completed a course in a specific organization, then it is a little bit too daunting and difficult to obtain exactly what we use as our key indicators.

We transitioned over to CYPHER Learning in 2020. 

It is very stable. 

This is deployed in the cloud. We have five to seven employees who actually go into the software, but we all access it remotely and it is all online in the cloud.

It can grow with us. We have gone from 150 users a month to 1,000 users every month in the matter of six months, and we are getting even bigger. We will probably have 10,000 users every month by the end of the year.  We currently have 6,500 instructors, administrators, and students using the solution. We are getting about 1,000 to 1,100 more students every month.

I am very confident that the solution can be scaled. It does scale very well.

There is someone from IT, implementation, and curriculum always engaged in the platform. So, we have an IT Manager and Implementation Manager as well as a Director of Curriculum who assists with walk-throughs.

It is used all day, every day, by various members of our team. It is used all day during the school hours across the country. We are also looking to expand into Jamaica and Puerto Rico, so we will be international soon. We are adding new districts every other month. So, we have plans to extend our usage.

The support system on CYPHER Learning is one of its best features. I love the program because they get back to you quickly, and they are knowledgeable.

They have taken my suggestions and changed elements of the LMS to make things easier. In a matter of a week, I make a suggestion and their engineers create the change. There are a lot of little things like that which attracted us to do a trial, remain their client, and use the solution. This really helps my workflow.

I speak very highly of their support system, i.e., the help center. Their documentation is great. The help center is easy to follow for finding answers to my questions. The support team answers 24/7, though only on critical items during the weekends. 

I love the idea of the suggestions. They are very transparent about their roadmap. All of that falls under the support system. I am very pleased with the support system and would rate it as 10 out of 10.

Positive

I had several complaints about the Moodle Workplace. With our previous LMS, I had to update every course individually with new changes. We serve hundreds of school districts across the country. Every school has multiple schools, every school has multiple teachers, and teachers have multiple copies of the course for their different sections of classes. Therefore, Moodle was not working out.

We serve schools and school districts, and we provide STEM-related STEM online courses to school districts and other community student serving organizations, i.e., anybody who serves students. We needed a way to translate the courses somewhat quickly, then update the courses across all our tenants or different clients.

Because of COVID, we really needed a new solution for our multi-tenant LMS. We were using Moodle Workplace previously, which just wasn't working out. The CEO found CYPHER Learning somehow, and it has been amazing ever since.

We looked at the different features that CYPHER Learning offered. It had gamification, which is also something that we wanted to do and Moodle couldn't do. It had the syncing feature, where I could update one course and sync it across every course that I have ever made. Also, it works with language. It could translate into 40-plus languages. So, it seemed like this solution was a much better use case for us.

The onboarding was quite complex since there is so much you can do. There are so many features that can be used. We were guided to do things that were essential, e.g., creating organizations, creating accounts, managing accounts, creating courses, and editing courses. That was all very straightforward. I could actually figure it out before we even got to the onboarding, so we were able to focus on more complex, different things than onboarding.

We spaced the deployment out over three weeks, working on it once a week, so we were able to have time in between the practice to learn different things. We may have even expanded that because we needed to have a client come in pretty quickly. 

CYPHER Learning has helped reduce our administrative work and costs when delivering training material.

If we were still in Moodle, it would be a lot harder for companies to join us. I don't think that they would feel as confident. That has definitely been a return on investment from using CYPHER Learning. 

We are on a plan where we pay for 1,000 users every month. The pricing structure is pretty straightforward. It just depends on what you need. We are currently going with a monthly model because sometimes there are still months during the year where we will have a lot less students on the system, and we took that into consideration. 

I would advise to ask about reseller options since they have reseller options for other organizations to use their LMS.

The more users you get a month, the more you will pay. If you go over your plan, there is an additional $6 per user. Sometimes it doesn't make sense to jump to the next plan because you wouldn't be using that number of users or overage. Other than more users than our plan costs, there are no other additional charges that I have found yet.

We looked at a couple other options, but we didn't feel confident that they would be able to support our usage needs and potential growth. When we were looking at the list of the different features, comparing them, one CYPHER Learning just blew TalentLMS out of the water. Therefore, we went for the potential to grow with CYPHER Learning over the lack of features that other companies had.

CYPHER LEARNING is very forward-looking in the fact that they don't want to be a typical LMS. They have taken into consideration AI, automation, rules, and gamification. These types of features are really transforming the way people learn. They are really using emerging technologies to be a learning management system that is intelligent and can adapt with the learner. This would be some of my best advice to consider as people are creating courses and training.

Keep an open mind in how students can best learn online. For example, I am learning about the different automation and gamification features and how they equate or relate to our company's goal. Besides learning how to become an expert in their platform and knowing how to use different features, I have observed how students can best learn on the platform.

The solution’s rules engine is on our radar. Now that our team is a bit bigger, we have some capacity to go into that. I am really looking forward to using its automation features and rules.

With facilitators, who know little to nothing about our content, we train them. So, it can be taught by anybody.

I would rate the solution as nine out of 10 due to the reporting.

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.

As a reseller, our use case is for a primary school in Egypt. They use it for uploading material for the students and organizing the content throughout the year. They also use it for adding their grades in the grade book and for communication. They have also tried using the gamification and the certificates and rewarding systems in CYPHER Learning, and it has been a pretty good experience for them so far.

The school we sold the system to is pretty happy with the organization of the content and the communication with the parents that the solution provides. They were also very happy with the gamification, the automation that happens within the system when a student finishes a specific part of the content or gets a specific score.

CYPHER Learning was also an additional value for that school, something they needed as they were advertising themselves as using the latest technology in education. The system helped with that, thanks to the stability and the strong features it furnishes.

And because it's pretty organized, it helps students keep track of their standing, both in terms of the materials being covered and within the assessments that they get.

It has also helped our client school reduce administrative work. From the feedback that I have gotten, it is saving them a lot of time.

CYPHER Learning has also reduced costs related to printing materials and textbook acquisitions a lot. This is one of the reasons people are going to software. It's not because they find it is much easier. Sometimes they go for the solution because it saves on costs. That's not just true of CYPHER Learning but of many other solutions.

What I like most is the usability of the system and the many options that it has. I can make a regular course or I can have the course organized remotely. I can turn off and on any feature that I like. That's what I find most interesting. Most LMSs have a fixed template for all the courses and the whole school uses it. When it comes to younger ages, they need fewer features so there won't be a lot of hassle for the teachers and parents. That's what we can do using CYPHER Learning: Just turn off anything that we don't need in a specific course.

I can also engage with the parents or students on different levels, either via groups, within the course or the forum.

The gamification is a good feature because not all LMSs have a gaming or reward system. The leaderboard makes for competition among the students, especially from ages 10 to 15, and makes them interested in moving forward in the educational process, throughout the game. It's good because students need to be engaged more in the educational process.

I find the gamification process easy, especially if I have something in mind for the game. Many teachers also found it pretty easy, while some didn't, but they weren't familiar with using technology in general. The ones who used it regularly with the students were very satisfied with it. In the end, students using it gain points and certificates or badges, and it depends on what the teacher has in mind for the students to compete on.

It's not hard for students to use gamification because, in the end, they just have to finish the material and upload it to get a specific score on a test. They get a badge, and they can see their progress on the leaderboard. It's very rewarding.

Gamification would be much better if there were integrations with LTI tools, or if there were some built-in questions for gamification. For example, if a student achieves a specific score on a test, it would be much better if they were interactive questions added to the assignment itself from within CYPHER Learning. It would be nice if they enhanced this part of the solution. There are many platforms for gamified tests and interactive assignments and worksheets but if these features were within the system, especially the gamification part, it would be great.

For international schools in Egypt, there are certification requirements. They have to have an LMS. But for other schools, it is a value proposition. We have 100 percent face-to-face learning in Egypt, now that COVID is over. There is competition when it comes to having schools use the system and sometimes we face difficulties getting schools, in general, to support this kind of educational process. Having something like gamification helps because students are more engaged with it and are more eager to use the system. That's especially true because they are fully attending classes in the school, nothing is online anymore, other than the materials and assignments in the system. It's good to have something to catch their attention.

Also, customization of report cards is hard to handle, with the grading criteria that specific schools use. It can be done for each course, but in the end, students receive report cards or certificates for their progress throughout the term and the year and it's hard to customize these report cards. They don't have a grading scheme for the Egyptian curriculum.

In addition, if the system had some graphing abilities and not just exporting of data to Excel sheets, that would be nice. I would like to be able to run a report on something and get graphs with insightful data. In an Excel sheet, I just have to reanalyze the data.

For example, if I want to run a report on students' attendance, it doesn't have to be a number for the whole school or a sheet of numbers. It could give me some graphs on different stages or different courses. If I am analyzing a student's time spent within a course, I would like to see how many hours he spent compared to other students. It would help if there were an analytical part to the data obtained from the system.

Also, I have to do a lot of clicking to reach something. When I go back, it just closes all that I did. It collapses everything. It doesn't make it hard to use, but it's disturbing to have to do all those clicks.

We studied the product before we finally started introducing it into the Egyptian market in 2021. There is a school contracted with us for it right now so I have almost one year of user experience. We provide training on the system and technical support for the school.

We are a reseller of educational solutions, both hardware and software. They can be learning management systems, school management systems, and interactive, live panels. Sometimes we sell full solutions to a school, and we provide training and follow-up throughout the year. The Egyptian market is a bit hard to compete in, but not many companies resell these products here.

Solutions like these have gone viral with COVID-19 and schools need support and onsite training for the teachers, and this is what we've been providing for the past 12 years.

It's a pretty good product. In our company, we only resell three products, and CYPHER Learning is one of them. It's pretty reliable and it has a lot of features.

It could be used on many sites, and it will be even better once we have more schools interested in deploying LMSs in their schools. From what I have seen of the system, it could even be used in colleges and universities.

We are involved in implementing CYPHER Learning. First, we open the account and then pay for the license. Then, we start putting the data of the school on the system. We give them the courses, the users, the links for parents and students, and we start helping them with uploading the material. Sometimes, we help them with the grading process, if needed.

I find the initial setup is pretty easy, but schools here have many things inside things, inside things. It becomes a complicated hierarchy. That's what makes it hard. It's easy to get it done on the system, once we figure out what we want things to look like in the end.

We did the setup ourselves. During the first term, we started getting support from CYPHER LEARNING, and it was pretty good. We learned a few points and they gave us good support.

We have evaluated many LMSs before. Some are produced locally in Egypt, some are from the greater Middle East, and some are solutions like Blackboard, Classe365, and others. I'm familiar with using different LMSs and have done comparisons between them.

We provide many products to the Egyptian market. Our customers are the ones who choose. We find that CYPHER Learning is a pretty interesting system, full of features, and it's pretty stable. I can see that the product is developing very well and covers a lot of the needs of the Egyptian market. It's also pretty easy to use, especially if you are provided the right training from the company. We feel that there are many selling points to the product.

My advice would be to organize all the work and the output so that you can see how it would be deployed in the system, and not just look for a single output. Using technology, you can have a million outputs with the same value. You can be flexible with the system, and it will give you the results that you need.

We use it for three different programs of varying sizes. For example, one of our programs currently has 2,500 students. Another has about 1,200. So, we use it for varying programs that vary from anywhere from nine months to two years.

It brings students together in one place with teaching materials. Also, it has a social capability to it by way of forums and groups. That is definitely important for our programs. There has been a lot of engagement in our programs.

It is extremely important that dates and times are exact when we follow up with students, as it keeps our students on track.

For as long as I have been working with MATRIX (for a few years now), they have the social aspect with groups. The thing that they did not have for years, until earlier this year, was a reply-all feature. I had been asking for that for years and they finally added it this year. That has been helpful because now our students are less frustrated.

We can see who has accessed the portal, but it is not very intuitive. There is an issue with MATRIX user reporting. It is not that useful a lot of the time because we see conflicting dates in the activity and login. I have tried to work with their engineers, and asked, "Well, what's the real deal here," and there is no clarity around it. However, we can tell when people have last logged in.

The user reporting is a mess. It is unclear what I will get from this report. You need to keep tweaking and trying different options in the reports, then you don't know what you will get until you run the report. That is time-consuming and unclear to the user.

The calendar system could be greatly improved. I understand MATRIX is progressing in many ways by way of focusing on integrations with other apps and the whole API world. However, it would be nice if they could revisit their basics, e.g., the calendar system and user reporting, and get those basic things that people use every day to be accurate. 

I have been using it since December 2019, which has been pretty much two years now.

On the whole, it is pretty stable, but there have been issues that keep creeping up. I have been reporting them for years, getting temporary solutions. I don't know if they are running updates on their end, but the previous solution will then fall apart. I have to report it again and they have to fix it again. This all has to do with their basics, as far as reporting and calendars.

The technical support is 50-50. You don't know what you are going to get. Sometimes they will resolve it or help you resolve it, then other times you get an answer from someone who says, "It is not capable of doing that." Then, the next day, you might get a response from another technician who says, "Oh, I am sorry. Our system actually does this quite often."

They are hands-off by way of saying, "Oh, we are unable to replicate this." This is even when I am showing them video and screenshot proof of what is happening. Quite often, they say, "Oh, we are not able to replicate this." Then, that is it. They don't really help beyond that.

I would rate the technical support as six out of 10.

Neutral

We didn't previously use another solution.

We do cycles with our programs, but I am involved in every setup.

The initial setup is straightforward in some ways. I have a background in LMS development so it is easy to set up and straightforward in that way. Some of it is not straightforward because some of the options are by way of setting up your site. They are not very clear about what they do. Or, some options are just thrown here and there in the settings. It seems not completely organized. It is like, "Well, where should we put this? Let's just put this here." Even though it doesn't quite make sense there, there isn't a lot of flexibility in terms of customizing things in MATRIX. 

Deployment time varies per program. We try to allow a lot of space for QA testing and other things. It takes about a month to deploy, but that is not necessarily eight hours a day, five days a week. I am saying a month for internal user testing. Since our programs are very extensive with a lot of materials, it does take time to set them up.

We just purchased this solution from the vendor, then it was built in-house.

There is a team for deployment and maintenance because we have so many students across a few programs. There are at least 10 people. That varies from people getting into the weeds of building the courses, working on the back-end, or just administering it.

We extensively use it since we use it to deploy our biggest selling courses or programs. It is used year-round and daily by students, and by us as well. We actually want to look at other systems or develop our own system because the cost point of MATRIX is so high. It doesn't feel like we get any value for it.

Take your time and test it out. Forecast how many users you will have. Are they going to be able to keep up with the high cost per user? I would definitely tell them to really dive in and forecast growth. See if you can keep up with this budgetary-wise.

I really want to work with our VP of technology and see about developing our own system so we can move away from MATRIX and save on profit.

I would rate this solution as seven out of 10.