There are people who believe this is the best time of the year.
The holidays are just around the corner. Vacation – the true part of the workplace holiday spirit – is just around the corner.
Sure the days of potluck are gone (for most folks), after all, hard to have potluck when 10 people are in the office.
Then again, some folk’s “meals” are items you would put in your mouth, then right into the napkin and trash or tell them you can’t have this scrumptious food, due to an allergy (and with your wits, think quickly of one).
For me, this is the time of year when the Top 10 best learning systems are just around the corner.
This post, though, covers what used to be the 11-20 learning system rankings.
This year, I’ve decided to shake things up a bit. Instead of the traditional Top 10, I’ll be recognizing best-in-class systems in a variety of categories from vendors across the board.
You can be enthralled, and that is fine. And well, you can be thinking – huh?
For those of you wondering about the 11-20 rankings, I’ve made a change this year. I’ve extended the list to 11-25, but without any additional commentary, just the listing.
After all, the BEST IN CLASS is where we are going here – including some other gifts too.
11-25 Learning System Rankings
For how I conducted these rankings, I wrote a lengthy post – which you can read on your own, in case you forgot.
Let’s get to the list (clap, clap, clap)
Highlights
SparkLearn’s win is a testament to its excellent fit with deskless/frontline workers. Their mobile app is a game-changer, providing a user-friendly experience for those on the go.
The admins should use the website. Trust me when I say this—your frontline folks should not use the web. It’s not pretty. The winner here is the mobile app.
Bealink combines LXP with honest LMS capabilities, and its analytics strength is via an LRS. It’s quite impressive on the metrics side, and for those folks who remember what an LRS was initially designed for (and it’s rare to see vendors actually using it as it was intended), it does.
Umu and it may not have the wow UI/UX side, but they are nice systems with lots of potential.
Fuse who is working on a new UI/UX – when that launches, it’s a whole new ballgame. It’s not there yet, i.e., in 2024, and some capabilities that are in the works for 25 are the factor for the drop.
I still like the system.
Schoox takes a drop simply because it has lost its footing on what and only specifically market audience it should focus upon—L&D.
This entry into customer training is a mistake. The system heavily skews L&D – internal.
IMC – What they have with AI is impressive, and what they have now is equally sweet.
They have been stronger in Europe than the U.S., I believe that will slowly change.
Juno Journey is a Talent Development platform. I like the system, but I was expecting more from a system that was ranked in the top five last year.
Still, it’s very strong, and folks seeking a powerful LXP intertwined with an LMS and Performance feature set should check them out.
Learning Pool is another vendor with some high hits, some solids, and some – come on, do more.
Again, perhaps I had higher expectations here, but hey, I have higher expectations here.
Before we get to Best in Class, let’s announce the winners in other categories, including ones you never thought there could be an award for, but yeah, there could and should.
Bytekast – For those wanting a mobile app with your learning content and branded without costing you a fortune – Bytekast.
Regardless of if it is for your system, your company, or as a training consultant and so on, this is the vendor to go.
It is all around learning here, but what I love is the built-in content creator tool, the ability to add to iOS and Google, which Bytekast takes care of for you.
Perfect for onboarding, compliance, workforce development, content delivery, and lots of other options.
I am so fond of it, that I plan to use it for my content – so folks can access it on the go.
It is by far the best learning technology product I saw in 2024. Not even close.
EdFlex: They are a content aggregator, and they rock.
They offer a plethora of free content, from TED talks to other valuable resources, and a diverse range of publishers, sparking your curiosity and eagerness to explore.
Despite its name, EdFlex is a versatile content aggregator that is well-suited for the corporate space.
Its extensive library of free content includes TED talks and third-party commercial publishers’ content.
Make it the overall winner for this award – but wait…
Next, because it says, ” third party,” I wanted to add a specific publisher that isn’t per se an aggregator.
Nevertheless, there will be folks who say, “Wait a minute. It implies ‘Publisher,’ not publishers.” Therefore, I present two.
One is a publisher, and the other is, as a bonus, the best custom dev entity I have seen and always recommend.
Biz Library is a content publisher and a key player in the corporate learning space. Their content can be purchased for use in their system or found on various e-learning content marketplaces.
Yes, you can buy their content to use in their system, but you can also find it on numerous learning systems’ e-learning content marketplaces/exchanges.
One of the advantages of Biz Library’s content is its adaptability.
You can use their courses in your learning system, or you can find them on other e-learning content marketplaces, providing you with multiple options for integrating high-quality content into your training programs.
I like that the courses/content are created and developed by in-house instructional designers and e-learning developers—experts in their own right. Biz was founded by Dean Pichee, who I’d argue is one of the pioneers in WBT.
They keep up to date with the content (which is huge), bringing in the latest topics, including AI.
Along the way, interactive and engaging content exists.
Class Custom Development – Mindspring.
A complete in-house team of instructional designer experts and e-learning developers.
I love them because they know the ins and outs of developing courses/content with an understanding of all the nuances.
Tailored to the exact standards of your use cases and/or what you specifically desire, including truly interactive content and real-life/real-world scenarios (not just for technical skills), this is how you use it to gain mass usage and repeat usage.
This is new this year, and because of that, I chose a few categories under this placement.
Each vendor listed below deserves the “Best in Class” award 2024.
- Content Creator – This means the best built-in authoring tool I call “content creator.”
- New Administrators—Which system is the best on the administration side, whereas someone could learn and utilize it without it being cumbersome? I looked at this from someone who just got the learning system handed to them (e.g., L&D gutted, system goes to HRIS) or some department that lacks any knowledge of learning or training. Secondly, I looked at it from a new administrator who has no experience with any type of learning system.
- Onboarding—Which system does the best job onboarding new clients? This refers to the moment the administrator, even the person running L&D or Training, learns about the system, including its ins and outs and more.
- UI/UX – There are lots to pick from, so I identified three that stood out in 2024. The challenge is that the typical MO from vendors – learner side focus, admin side – not so much. Or they do a good to a great job, but the reporting piece is horrible, and data visualization isn’t much better.
- I’m not a fan of graphs or pie charts that appear as something I can see on Excel, Google Spreadsheet, etc.
- It’s 2024, folks. Design better. The problem? It’s rampant. Thus, I went err, focused on the learner and admin sides overall, and left out data visualization with metrics.
- Many people tend to think that new systems, especially recent ones, have the best UI/UX.
- Hate to burst your bubble, but that is not the case.
- Never has been and never will be.
Going into the final selection process, Cypher Learning was the leader.
I had one more system to look at, and after seeing what could be done, 360Learning just outdid CL by a blade of grass—okay, it’s more like half a lawn in a small subdivision.
The most common feature in a system is the content creators with AI. It’s like picking low-hanging fruit. In this aspect, 360 did a commendable job. However, it’s important to note that it lacked a couple of items that many vendors fail to mention in their content creator tools and other AI-related pieces.
The big one is that there is no notice that AI may produce fake or false information and that a person should review it before accepting it.
It’s a rare find to see a vendor explicitly stating the need for human review of AI-generated content in their system. This is a feature that CL has, but 360 doesn’t.
Despite the few shortcomings, 360 was overall, better than Cypher Learning.
Big Wins
- Creating a course with options that included a template for sales training, onboarding, and guided creation was among the three. They had a few others. I am a fan of vendors who use AI to have both already-to-go built-in templates designed for a specific task or role and have templates to create from scratch, guided, etc.
- You can choose to use AI or not for content creation. You see this in a few content creator tools in learning systems. Still, it was shown very clearly, without someone having to ask if it can be done or figure out if it is doable – okay, they probably don’t know, so identifying as an option is relevant.
- Being trained on using the content creator tool to push out quick content (look, that is what content creator tools, within systems using AI, are all about).
- By ‘pushout ‘, I mean the ability to quickly and easily create and publish content. Think of how many people get shoved into overseeing the learning system with zero background in training or L&D and have been told they need to create content/courses. OR again, in another department that has no idea.
- Pushout isn’t reasonable or even fair. It means quick. This appears very common today across the board with content creator tools (i.e., authoring), and yes, even before AI, that was the approach – which explains a lot.
- When creating a course with AI, it creates chapters with a TOC identifying them as such. Not slides or screens (terminology that I see, even with some third-party standalone content creator tools—aka authoring tools). I love the term chapters because, well, that is how they are supposed to appear. Then you can have pages, etc. Anyway, I loved this.
- Lots of flex with the content creator.
Many systems fell under this category, aligning with what I was seeking in the perspective I noted above.
I believe a misnomer in the industry is the presumption that a system that has been around a long time is not ideal for someone with no background who jumps in (after training, I hope) and goes.
Equally, a misnomer that simply means easier, or that higher cost is better, or target audience means X or Y.
You can have a system that is not expensive, offers many of the key functionality folks are looking for, and will do the trick (for many people).
There is no perfect system out there.
There is no system that aligns with every use case that someone wants without fail 100% of the time.
Plus, a client may say XYS as the use case, then get into the system and change to BXY, which results in them being irritated because they thought the system did this when it didn’t.
I see that a lot too.
What I thought about was around the newbies, a streamlined system on the admin side, that if the person got sick or won the lottery, someone could sit down and take control without crying privately.
This system isn’t for everyone—again, no system is guaranteed—but I like it anyway. They are in my Top 10 Learning Systems for 2024 and were in 2023.
A streamlined admin side, easy to use, and if you had no idea what you were doing—because the other admin is out, plus the person overseeing the department has never been trained because they didn’t think it was relevant (and this happens WAY too much)—BizLMS delivers.
The Skills component is streamlined, too.
BizLMS focuses on employees (internal is how the industry refers to the audience), not customer training. However, I will dive more into this in the Top 10, 2024.
The other systems that went to the finals were Docebo, Learn Amp, and Eurekos.
One is a combo (internal and external), one is internal-driven, and the other is customer training-focused, and only that segment. Yes, I did that in order with the system.
I love how they onboard new clients.
They do it the right way, and I often note one thing that I have never seen a vendor do before—however, it makes perfect sense.
That is how impressive it is.
- Training two additional people who are not overseeing the system and are in a different department than the one who has the system.
They do this, because of what if the admin wins the lottery, who will take over, until someone is hired to replace?
They train each of these employees and certify them at the end, validating that they know how to perform the key admin items that the use case(s) require.
Plus, they recommend a few additional items based on TI’s analysis of essentials.
This highly impressed me.
- It is a long onboarding process. It may take a week or a couple of days because they go through the entire system, piece by piece, with the admin and, if asked, by whoever oversees the department. If the client is going to use A, B, and C in the system, including, let’s say, the video coaching piece – then TI goes piece by piece. In other words, let’s make sure you know how it works – which they find, and I’d agree less calls/e-mails to support asking how to do something. A vendor wants this because when you reach out, it costs them. There will be fewer issues, which will be better for you and the vendor.
- They will follow up when they roll out a new feature, functionality, or something else. Training begins in earnest, and they never charge a fee for this, including follow-up training.
I should mention that they do charge a fee for the extensive onboarding process.
It is intensive and goes beyond the standard approach in the industry.
The last category.
Speaking of misperceptions, way too many folks think that the newest system or the most recent one will have a better UI/UX than one they identify as old-school, traditional, or long in the tooth (wait, that is my term).
You get the point.
Are there a lot of systems that offer outstanding UI/UX?
Absolutely.
Plus, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
In this case, which will be your learners – or should be your focus, not you.
Ditto on the admin side unless you are also the admin and running the department.
It is you and the admin.
However, for different reasons.
As they say, “One person’s garbage is another person’s grand piano.”
I put ease of use and flexibility into my bucket; any learner could see this and go, “Wow,” learner-friendly, learner-driven navigation you can figure out.
Again, not you.
Let’s remember who will use the system and who will see it day to day. In this case, it’s not all about you.
The probability that an end-user is going to tell you that the system is garbage is low.
Even if you do surveys – you are tracking them or asking for their name.
Who is going to be honest, about something, if they know of the tracking, or you want their name and info?
Hence, anonymity is the only way to do this.
I digress.
When I looked at the systems, I recognized that adding your logo, perhaps having a carousel on the top and that side – was not a factor.
System – the one learners will use for learning or training here. Not job planning, interviewing, recruting items, or whatever else a vendor offers beyond just learning or training.
Finalists: In no particular order: When I say Solid that is what a vendor wants.
Reporting was considered, but vendors tht are even solid are all over the map here – and we are talking about UI/UX, not what reporting looks like.
Metrics, though – please, I want to avoid seeing Excel here.
But a lot of people do not care – which I ask why.
Back to Finalists
If you are seeking the Rolls Royce of UI/UX there is only one vendor in the list that stands out
Screenshots in the Top 10.
Luxury at its finest. They focus heavy on customer training/client, B2B, but have just started into L&D.
Bottom Line
That’s the list folks. The “Best in Class” awards, the top content publisher, learning tech product of the year, and last but not least – 11-25 rankings.
Congrats to all the winners, only one of which, was aware that uh, they would win – and that was the content creator.
Everyone else?
Surprise!!!!
Which reminds me
If you are now in the office, just remember
Whose food item,
Will you need a napkin
and trash can
To toss.
E-Learning 24/7
