CYPHER Learning Reviews

We use it to provide online courses for distance learning students.

We have both teachers and admin staff who work with the platform. Teachers can see student submissions and our admin staff can manage our course content and eCommerce.

We can customize our ordering system so we can have the data that we need to communicate with our students, their families, and our staff. 

We can collect surveys, using the LMS platform, from our students on how their courses are going. 

The ordering process is automated. When students register for a course, their course is set up automatically. We can manually register them when needed, as needed.

CYPHER Learning has helped by providing a variety of activities to help students get engaged, developing their independence and higher-order thinking skills. The quizzes and tests help keep our students engaged in developing their skills. I would rate the importance of this as 10 out of 10 for our organization.

CYPHER Learning has helped us save time on intervention strategies for students, especially those who need guidance. 

We provide a great program and having a top LMS system is essential. Our students love the platform, from what we hear. One of the things that they love about our courses is the LMS system's ease and use.

The navigation is easy to use. 

It is very easy for educators to communicate with students using the CYPHER Learning messaging system, which is imperative for our organization.

There are many applications available as add-ons. There are so many that we have not used all of them, but are happy to know we have more than we currently need.

It can maintain an infinite database of our students.

The solution is top-notch for tagging classes and assignments. The tagging is great for ensuring that the content is compliant with standards.

Work more closely with Cypher customers when launching new versions of the platform before going live.

I have been using it for 12 years. Our company started delivering programs in 2010, and we started using CYPHER Learning in 2013.

CYPHER Learning is definitely a stable solution. We have experienced less than 1% downtime.

The platform is set up so there are no capacity limits. Our program can grow as much as we want it to grow. We don't have any constraints around how many more courses we can offer or how many students we can add. There are no constraints around that.

The scalability is infinite. There aren't any limitations on what we can or can't do.

Their tech support is top-notch. When there is an issue, we are always able to find a workaround that meets our specific needs. The tech support team help us with that. An example is using the reporting feature. If there is something that we need in a report and we can't get all the data in the default template of the report, then we can work with the tech support team who will show us how to customize it.

I would rate the technical support as 9.9 out of 10. It is almost perfect.

Positive

Before we moved to the CYPHER Learning platform, we tried another vendor and it didn't work.

We used another vendor in the beginning, which was low cost. We were a brand new company then, so we used what we could afford at the time. We switched because CYPHER Learning has everything. We were going to have to keep adding to what we had with the previous solution, so it was going to become cost-prohibitive.

I had an IT specialist, who was looking at our current system, recommend CYPHER Learning. He did a little research, and said, "This is the one you need." When we started using them, he was more than right.

The initial setup is easy. 

It took just one day to get it up and running. We were up the day that we started using it.

It is so user-friendly. You can create a course, and have that course up the same day. Though, it does depend on how much content is in your course.

One admin was initially needed for the deployment, which does depend on the size of the deployment. Now, we have four admins working on it. There are also teachers who upload content.

When I first started, I wanted the enterprise package. We had to build up our student base to get up to the number of students that we needed to be in that enterprise package. Then, we had a 100% return on investment within the first year of using the program.

Our time saving increased by 70%, going from manual to automated.

The solution has definitely helped us reduce our administrative work. It gives us the ability to provide distance learning for students who are not all in the same area, which is valuable. 

The amount of time that we need to use the LMS system to quantify things is minimal.

CYPHER Learning has 100% helped us save on costs related to printing materials, textbook acquisitions, and license fees. It is instant for our students when we update or come up with a new version of our programs because we use this platform. If we need to modify a quiz, update a course, or add new material, all our students receive that instantly. There is no reprinting. There are no out-of-pocket costs for us. Also, there isn't a time delay for students.

CYPHER Learning has helped reduce the number of staff needed to manage our learning management system (LMS). It would likely triple our staff and admin if we weren't using it.

We do a monthly subscription.

It is priced competitively. Their pricing is one of the best in the industry. They are not the cheapest solution, but they are not the most expensive. The value that they provide, for what we pay, is invaluable. There are no add-on costs.

We have been using it for so long, and we wouldn't use a different platform. It is the best platform out there. It has become part of our daily environment, where we use it all day long.

The solution's ability to bridge our student's learning gap is at the top of the industry.

I talk with other schools who discuss their platforms. They always want our platform.

Don't waste a lot of time evaluating other programs. This is the best one out there.

We have plans to increase our usage of CYPHER Learning.

I would rate this solution as 10 out of 10.

We develop 3D design software for engineers. Our product portfolio is a complex ecosystem and, therefore, we support our software sales with training services to enable our customers to get the most out of our products. CYPHER Learning is the heart of our global online training platform.

Before implementing CYPHER Learning, our training activity followed the traditional setup with classroom-based training. With an online training platform, we can reach our end-users directly and with CYPHER Learning we can track both learner and trainer activities. This helps a lot in staff resource planning and in scheduling content development and release. With the help of CYPHER Learning, we can make data-driven decisions, while previously we did not have this level of insight. At the same time, the platform is still capable of supporting traditional classroom-based training activities, so switching to an online platform was a significant change as it opened up a lot of new opportunities.

It has also helped to reduce our costs. Previously, we had to invest in training facilities, equip the rooms with computers, and hire and train the instructors. Now, our training landscape is more diverse: self-paced training is available everywhere, including in countries where we do not have local representatives. We can reach them easily at a very low cost. In certain markets, where the learners are scattered throughout a huge territory, it is more economical to deliver online training. We don't have to invest in classrooms and equipment. Certainly, we had to set up a studio where we can record training sessions with good-quality cameras, microphones, and studio lights. That required some investment. But it is just a single studio compared to dozens of fully equipped classrooms around the world.

In our business, the lack of knowledge on the customer side can be a barrier to sales. If you don't know how to use the software, you simply won't buy it. With online training, the entry barrier of training is really low: you don't have to travel to a training facility or to a different city. You can just sit in front of your own computer and access all the training materials. Using CYPHER Learning made it possible to eliminate the knowledge barrier.

It is really important that our end-users can choose the way they learn, online or offline, self-paced or trainer-led. Whatever format the learners prefer, they will get instant feedback about their progress and performance. We did research when we kickstarted online training back in 2020 and found that with gamification we can inspire people to progress and learn more. Learners can collect points, earn badges, and get certified. In the online world, people prefer to learn in small chunks, and if you give a small award for each chunk as a kind of instant and positive feedback, it drives learners to continue learning. Overall, it helps us to have more active learners and generate a healthy buzz around our site.

CYPHER Learning enables us to configure various automation rules and then the system automatically reacts to certain end-user actions. Having a lot of active learners on the front end means a lot of administrative tasks on the back end. But with rules we can automate most of these repetitive processes, so we try to automate as many things as possible.

On the back end, the most important feature is the built-in reporting, which makes it possible to track all of the user activities: what kind of courses the learners enroll in, how they are progressing, and when they complete a course. We have full insight, and we can analyze the captured data, see the trends, and predict the future to a certain extent. Also, with the API connections, we built an ecosystem around CYPHER Learning that automates financial reporting and a custom log-in solution.

There is also an exchange format called SCORM and you can migrate training materials made on other platforms with the help of that data exchange format. This feature can be very important for those companies that already use a learning management system and want to switch to CYPHER Learning.

We manage a huge number of registered users and also offer a large number of courses on our platform, and our courses are offered via a large number of organizations. It's a very complex setup, but CYPHER LEARNING did an excellent job of fixing the initial speed issues we had.

We are also considering how we can improve the user experience. There are some customization options in CYPHER Learning that we haven’t utilized yet, but with the help of these we want to make our site more attractive to paying customers.

Finally, we are very excited about the improved and flexible access that is already in CYPHER LEARNING’s development pipeline.

We have been using it since March 2020.

If I remember correctly, they warrant a 99.999 percent uptime, which is exceptional. We have never faced any major breakdowns or issues since we started using CYPHER Learning.

Scalability has a lot of aspects. One of them is pricing, and CYPHER LEARNING offers scalable pricing plans for small, medium, and large institutes and businesses as well. Technically speaking, in CYPHER Learning you can set up multiple organizations within your platform and you can also link multiple platforms into a network and use common resources.

We have a global training business and multiple teams are using CYPHER Learning around the world. Our learners come from nearly 200 countries, covering every continent. We have established multiple organizations that provide courses in many languages, while the user interface of CYPHER Learning is translated into more than 50 languages.

Cypher Learning’s technical support is excellent. We are very satisfied with the experienced response rate and speed. They have a support forum where we can ask questions or raise concerns and, in most cases, they answer within minutes.

Positive

We used Moodle for specific purposes, but we managed only a couple of courses on that platform. Moodle is free and may be a great solution for non-profit education institutes, but it completely lacks e-commerce features and, according to our standards, it is not scalable. After implementing CYPHER Learning, we migrated the courses and phased out Moodle.

We launched the site during the outbreak of the pandemic and the release was a relatively smooth process. We did not face any major difficulties. Although we wanted to integrate the platform with other company systems right at the beginning, which proved to be a more complex task and required some planning and in-house development, we managed to go live within six weeks: two to three staff members were involved in setting up the platform, while a bigger number was working on producing the digital version of our existing training materials.

If I look at the big picture—overall company sales, not just training—which is more important for us, we definitely have seen return on our investment and the result is the same if we look at training as a standalone business.

Overall, the pricing of CYPHER Learning is okay. There are cheaper solutions that offer way fewer features and there are more expensive and more capable solutions, but they might be overkill for many companies that are not big enough. It's about balance. CYPHER Learning is in the middle; not very expensive, not very cheap.

You can start out small, at a relatively cheap price. Within two years, we have grown significantly. They are really flexible regarding the pricing and they can manage companies of all sizes with their pricing and policies. There are different price levels for X number of users and Y number of users and they offer a lot of options. That was an important factor.

We evaluated Adobe Captivate. It's a capable tool but it comes with a hefty price tag, which is not a surprise if you consider that it was made primarily for large global companies. The entry barrier is very high for that solution. We also evaluated some other products, but most of those were either tailored to certain business types or developed mainly for internal training and lacked scalability and flexibility.

Start small and grow as you go. Build a scalable solution. You can set up multiple organizations within your platform, and you can link multiple CYPHER Learning instances together into a network as you grow your business. The good news is that CYPHER Learning fully supports this approach with its gradual pricing.

We use it for grading and all my class assignments.

I used it during COVID. So, we had distance learning where we were doing Zoom, then I would still have the students do their assignments in CYPHER Learning during the distance learning.

I put the date in when I wanted students to be able to see an assignment. Then, I would have all the assignments in CYPHER Learning, but I wouldn't let the students see it until the day it was assigned.

I particularly like the discussions, which have been good for student engagement. Students can log in, and if we are having a discussion online, they can read everyone else's responses. They can also respond to what was said. I would have them comment on the other students' thoughts based on the discussion, and that was excellent. Organizationally, it was excellent because it is how I run my class, where all assignments are in CYPHER Learning. 

A lot of it has to do with just knowing your students and what their needs are. If I come across a student in CYPHER Learning, who is in my class, then I can grade according to whatever their specific needs are. I can help them in a class according to what their needs are.

Once you get your class set up in CYPHER Learning, you can reuse assignments or go to the library and find assignments. Once everything is in CYPHER Learning, you can reuse it, which is awesome.

I like the survey, quiz, and discussion features. The grading program is pretty good too. I do a lot of essays in my class. So, I will have prompts where students need to think critically about a reading, then they must write an essay about it. So, they are writing essays in CYPHER Learning, then I am grading them in CYPHER Learning. That is super helpful. This is why the discussion, quizzes, and surveys are super helpful, and probably the assignments that I give the most often.

Another feature that I like is having one class with three child classes. When I assign it to my parent class, then it gets assigned to all my child classes. All my students do the same assignments, but I might modify how I grade the assignment according to their needs.

It is easy for educators to communicate with students using CYPHER Learning. Students often message me through CYPHER Learning. Also, I can comment on students' assignments, then they are able to respond to the comment that I put in CYPHER Learning. There is an email feature. So, if a student sends me a comment, then I also get an email about it, which is also helpful. It is important for teachers and students to have dialogue regarding expectations. Also, students can ask questions about assignments and I can clarify information for students.

One thing that has been a problem is that CYPHER Learning doesn't save the students' work while they are doing it. For example, if you are on a Google Doc, and you close your Google Doc, then you come back, the work that you did has been saved. However, in CYPHER Learning, if for some reason the student clicks out of CYPHER Learning and goes back in, whatever they typed isn't saved. That is an area that they need to improve. A lot of my students may write an essay, but if they are two paragraphs in and their iPad crashes or something, when they go back, they are like, "All my work is gone." So, this would be an area that I would recommend for improvement in CYPHER Learning. It needs to auto save, and it doesn't auto save. That is definitely a weakness.

I have been using it for four years.

For four years, the stability has been good.

Our entire district uses CYPHER Learning. As far as that goes, it is good. Also, it is nice having a library where people save stuff and see what other people are doing.

There are approximately 1,500 teachers and 13,000 to 14,000 students who are using CYPHER Learning.

The product is being extensively used district-wide.

If I had questions, I was able to get my questions answered. We were able to give feedback to CYPHER LEARNING about different questions or features. CYPHER LEARNING was usually able to address whatever the questions or issues were, which was helpful. The auto saving thing is something that hasn't been addressed that I am aware of. So, that is an ongoing issue that hasn't been resolved.

I would give the technical support nine out of 10. Usually, they get back to me pretty quickly with a solution, for whatever the issue was.

Positive

Prior to CYPHER Learning, we didn't have an online solution. It was just old school.

The initial setup is pretty straightforward. If I can learn it, anyone can learn it.

It is pretty intuitive. You need to set up your lessons. Since you will need to set them up somewhere, I feel like CYPHER Learning was pretty intuitive as far as what I needed to do as far as setting it up.

Any way you slice it, you will need to prepare your lessons. So, it doesn't take any longer in CYPHER Learning than it would any other way. It is a lot easier to have all your stuff in one place than to have a million papers flying around as well as having to grade papers. Having it all online is definitely better.

We have one tech coach at our school. If you have a tech question, you can go and ask them, then they will figure it out and help you. Anytime you do something new, you need professional development and training. So, we have tech coaches who help people to implement. So, if you are new, you can ask questions of the tech coach. 

The tech coach piece is good, providing ongoing support for teachers while they are implementing. That is a tip that is good protocol. That way, people aren't getting frustrated with it. At first, certain teachers didn't really like the grading thing. They were like, "Oh, I like Easy Grade Pro, and I want it to be Easy Grade Pro." I am like, "It's not like Easy Grade Pro, so just get over it."

When I do a survey, CYPHER Learning is helpful because then I can more quickly peruse students' responses. I don't have to go through question by question. Grading-wise, it has certainly helped, when giving a survey, to streamline my grading for that assignment.

I am sure there was some type of analysis that went into choosing CYPHER Learning. However, in the end, when the district selected CYPHER Learning, everyone was happy with it.

There is not much gamifying through CYPHER Learning. I do a lot of other activities in my class through other solutions, like Blooket, Quizizz, and Kahoot!. That is how I do gamification in my classroom.

Overall, it is a good learning management system and provides a good way to organize your class.

I would rate the solution as nine out of 10. The auto-save thing is the reason why they are not getting 10 out of 10.

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.

We use it for internal staff training. We're a large retail hospitality company. We have over 1,000 locations in Australia and we are also a Registered Training Organisation (RTO). That means we deliver nationally recognized qualifications. We use CYPHER Learning to deliver our qualifications to employees who sign up to complete one of those qualifications. 

We also use it for our management training. Anyone who becomes a manager within our system goes through a training program that is administered through CYPHER Learning.

We have locations across Australia, with offices in every major city where our trainers are based. One of the best benefits we've seen with CYPHER Learning is that it has allowed us to act more consistently on a national basis in how we approach the delivery of our training. Our trainers and assessors can now train and assess anyone in the country, as opposed to just where they're physically located.

When we were paper-based, the trainees would send in their coursework to their local training facility. Having a cloud-based solution has allowed us to better use our trainer resources across the country.

The transition from paper to digital has also been beneficial. As an organization, we were spending over significant money each year on printing and positing our training materials. We've seen huge cost savings in completely converting to an online digital learning system. 

And when it comes to administration, another really great feature in CYPHER Learning is the flexibility in marking. We can choose which activities are auto marked and which have to be marked by a trainer, and that really allows us to save a lot of time. We know when something is a very simple yes/no answer, we can set that to be auto-marked. That way we can spend our trainer resources on marking the more complex responses, such as those that are essay-based.

The ability to build and customize our own courses is one of the most valuable features. When we launched with CYPHER LEARNING, their team helped us build our courses. They took our paper-based coursework and developed a really engaging digital solution on the platform. The best part, for us, is being able to continue to customize and edit it. We have been able to add and explore new features as we've grown with it.

We use the system's rules engine to help automate our training. For example, as a student completes one piece of training, the rules engine unlocks the next part automatically. We also send pre-written notifications at the end of courses or at certain touch points within courses. All of that is really useful as well.

Another good functionality is that we have full visibility into when students last accessed courses, because CYPHER Learning shows us when they last accessed the portal. That helps our trainers to follow up with people who might be falling behind or who need help. And another great, related feature is that we can see how long trainees have spent on certain activities. With digital learning, it can be easy to just click-click-click and skip through things. Seeing how long students have spent on the material helps trainers have good conversations with their trainees and test their knowledge, just to make sure that they really are grasping the concepts.

There is good reporting functionality and there are good insights into trainee progress. That certainly helps our trainers to know where to target their efforts and who to follow up on. If we are looking at individual trainees, we get very good insights as to how they're tracking, what section they're up to, and how long they're taking on particular activities.

If there is one area that I would like to see more improvement in, it would be around detailed reporting. There are some little things that they could add that would give us more insights and we'd like to access those things through the reporting.

There's a lot of reporting functionality, but we've found it a bit challenging integrating it with our different organizations and getting some of the information that we need out of it. We'd like to see the kind of information that we get about individual trainees, but as a whole, across the organization. That's where we'd like to see improvement.

We've been using the solution as an organization for almost three years. I've been using it for about 12 months.

We have had no issues whatsoever. It seems to be very stable.

With CYPHER Learning, there is a lot of untapped potential for us as an organization. I look at all the available features and the add-ons and the apps that are available, and I've got lots of different ideas about how we could start to incorporate different ways of delivering our learning. I am also thinking about other learning that we're not currently doing in CYPHER Learning, and moving it to this platform. There certainly is scalability there.

We definitely have plans to increase our usage by migrating other learning courses to CYPHER Learning and that will increase our active users quite significantly. We're three years in and, now that we're comfortable and happy with the platform, we've got plans to put more courses on it.

And from a coursework perspective, there's definitely scalability. We feel comfortable that, as we start to put more learners in the system, it will scale.

We already have a large cohort of learners in the system. We have over 100,000 employees with access to the platform and there are about 10,000 people actively learning each month, but we have no concerns about scaling it. We've been in discussion with CYPHER LEARNING and we have plans that we can put in place to get more people onto CYPHER Learning.

The users are predominantly restaurant crew and managers. There are also restaurant supervisors who are responsible for coaching people through the platform, and there are the trainers and assessors within our corporate office who administer the learning.

The technical support is very good. There's a support forum, which we utilize quite regularly and the responses come in quite fast. We usually get a same-day response or even within a couple of hours to any support tickets, which is quite good. You can choose whether your query is public or private. Unless it's company-specific, you can mark it as a public ticket and then other users of the platform get to learn from the answers as well.

Positive

I've used other learning management systems before, and in my current company our previous system was a proprietary, home-grown solution. The benefit of going with CYPHER Learning was that we got their expertise in digital learning, which is probably something that we were lacking. Our platform did its job for a period of time, but as technology advanced, and the ways trainees can learn online advanced, we needed to keep up with our competitors, and CYPHER Learning has really helped us to do that.

The initial setup was complex because it was quite a complex integration. We have 100,000 employees, so setting up data feeds to give users access, and revoking access when people are terminated, and those kinds of administrative tasks, can't be done manually. Setting up the API requests to handle those things took a little bit of time, until we got things right. 

CYPHER LEARNING were very good to deal with and they assigned people to us. I wasn't part of the initial setup, but from what I understand they worked very well with our organization.

From my perspective, having come in and managed the platform for the last 12 months, with CYPHER Learning we get notably less contact through our support desk around the system, compared to our other digital platforms. That's a really good thing; people aren't complaining about it. That's obviously a good sign that it's working as intended.

As for our implementation strategy, we did a pilot group first. We picked one region of learners and one particular course and that allowed us to make sure that we were capturing feedback, customizing the platform to our needs, and ironing out any problems before we launched it on a larger scale. 

Once we were happy with that particular region and that particular course, we rolled it out for all courses in that state. We continued to capture more feedback and worked with CYPHER Learning to make any adjustments. We then rolled it out state by state.

There has been a clear return on investment for us. Even taking into consideration the additional implementation costs and the costs for building custom courses, we're still seeing that it's cheaper to run CYPHER Learning compared to the paper-based learning that we used to do.

Our pricing is based on active participants. We have a large employee base, but we made sure that we went with a pricing model that only charged us for active users, as opposed to all employees. We only enroll an employee into a course if they need to complete that course. That just helps us keep our costs down. While we have over 100,000 employees, because we have fewer than 10,000 people actively participating in a course per month, we have a plan where we pay for 10,000 users per month.

Understanding how many active users you will have, compared to total users who may access the platform, is something to consider.

In addition to the standard licensing fees, we had some setup costs to build our custom courses. With CYPHER Learning you can either build your courses from scratch yourself or you can utilize their team to assist you in doing that. We've done half and half. We paid for CYPHER LEARNING to build some initial courses and, since then, we've actually built some of our own as well.

The biggest lesson we've learned from using CYPHER Learning has been to be open to new ideas. The CYPHER LEARNING team has experts in marketing and the creation of digital learning. We had courses that worked for us and that we wanted to do in a certain way, but they suggested new ideas and different ways of approaching them. Being open to those has allowed us to innovate the way that we deliver our training, which has been good for us. Being open to innovation and new ways of delivering our training has been a worthwhile lesson for us.

We are an NGO that includes an academic program for updating health training for health professionals, such as doctors. MATRIX LMS is the tool that helps us with this.

Additionally, we use it for employees of our organization to take compliance courses.

One of the ways that MATRIX LMS has improved our organization is through cost savings. Our organization has an academic program to train health professionals. Face-to-face training comes with an expense, whereas having courses filed in the platform allows us to reach larger numbers of people at the same time. I would estimate it has helped us save 40 percent on our costs. And with regard to training facilities or travel involved in training, it saves us 100 percent. 

Doctors and health students must have some forms available and with this platform they have them available online with no need to print them out, resulting in cost savings. In addition, all the evaluations are also archived in the platform. We have to do evaluations at the beginning and the end of each course and the system is an instrument that streamlines our activities.

Another benefit is that students have the content available whenever they need it. Because we work with health teachers, and these people need things in a certain format and they also have to know how to fill that format out, MATRIX LMS allows us to host those formats there and highlight them, along with instructions on how to use them, and the content is always available.

I am in love with MATRIX LMS. For me, it is a platform that has everything. It is very powerful and intuitive. And because it is so user-friendly, it allows anyone without any knowledge of LMS platforms to make a course, publish it, and monitor it.

One of the things that I like most is the preparation of the courses and the resources that the platform has to carry them out.

Another attractive feature is the fact that you can download reports and have them available for the many audits that are done. These reports provide an indication of the steps taken on the platform.

In terms of automation, I use reminder messages to warn participants about the time they have left to complete a course. Although the training is self-managed, we do have a time limit to take the course. If people remain inactive for weeks, a reminder message is automatically sent to them to let them know that the deadline for taking the courses is approaching. There is also automation for different learning routes, but above all, the ability to send reminders is great.

For me, it is very important that the rules system helps to personalize the content because we have different levels for different profiles within this academy. We have profiles that have average academic preparation and others that are experts, so they cannot have the same competencies. Customizing these skills will help us to have greater control over what people are learning and the content they are going to digest.

Using the platform, I can also see who has not accessed the portal and follow up with them. That is one of the advantages that I like the most about MATRIX: I can validate the progress people are making and see the number of times they have entered the portal. When it comes to enabling me to monitor and check student progress, on a scale of one to 10, I give it a 20. It's very good. Whenever I give an introduction about what MATRIX LMS is for me, I always mention that it is a platform with monitoring tools. It helps me to see an honest accounting of a student’s progress.

Something that has always caused me a little concern is in relation to the visibility of users, because MATRIX LMS identifies users only by their emails. One of the things that I would like to see improvement on is detecting duplicate users by identifying them by their names and not only by their email addresses. Many people change their email addresses but we don't know that they have. This can result in unnecessary duplication of user accounts.

I have been using MATRIX LMS by CYPHER LEARNING for two years.

So far, we have only had an issue once where we lost some accounts. Before my arrival, there were 10 administrators and many of them had left the institution but still had active accounts. I realized that many of these users had modified the archived data without consulting us. By talking with the CYPHER LEARNING support team, we were able to obtain all the information that had been lost. That was the only unusual situation that has happened to us by using the system.

In terms of scalability, I would give it a score of 100 percent. I'm not part of the MATRIX LMS publicity team, but I honestly love it. It has consistent updates and it's getting better and better.

Including students and staff, we have about 850 users, consisting of instructors, the administration team, the director, and a manager. It is being used quite a lot. In fact, usage has increased recently, as we found that we had many more active students than we thought.

The solution’s technical support is excellent. They respond super fast. You ask any question through the support page and you always receive a quick answer. The team is always attentive and gives satisfactory answers.

Positive

I wasn't part of the organization when the platform was implemented. I understand that a person was hired to do that job. When I started here, the organization had already had some time with the platform. I had knowledge of other platforms that I had worked with and that is how I began to better configure this platform. For me, it was quite simple. 

The person who was doing my job had a hard time since he had never worked with an LMS platform and did not know how to manage the MATRIX LMS functions. I contacted their support team because it was the first time I worked with the system and the support was so good that, within a month, I already understood how to use the platform. The process was simple and quite user-friendly.

We have two people for administration of the platform, the sub-administrator who is the manager of the program, and me as the administrator.

The budget required to train the number of people we train in a month, using MATRIX LMS, would take us a year to train them without the platform.

Another way we see a return on investment is the fact that we don't have to print so many materials. The time savings are also worth a lot for us. Now, we can invest our time in other activities.

I always recommend to my colleagues from other institutions that they use MATRIX LMS. The quality makes the cost worth it.

If I remember correctly, they evaluated Canvas, Moodle, and others.

MATRIX LMS is a more powerful platform and has everything that we require. It is user-friendly, and we can make our courses without the need for a third party. It has the capacity to store what we need and has many resources. It really is a very good platform.

The rules engine helps personalize content based on users’ goals and performance, although we don't work by competencies because it is a resource that we have not used in-depth on the platform. Thanks to the solution's technical support team, I have been able to better explore the platform. We are going to use the entire topic of competencies in the future. In fact, we now have a course that is going to support an organization that is an ally of ours and we are going to explore the topic of competencies for it.

CYPHER LEARNING has made many updates to the platform but I don't think I have seen any new efficiencies for our processes. What I like the most about the new features is the gamified environment. That makes achieving our goals easier.

Even though we are in a pandemic, we can continue to update people, train them, and have the materials ready for when they want to use them, through any device.

MATRIX LMS is a platform that's worth trying. It's that simple. I give it a 20 out of 10.

Foreign Language:(Spanish)

¿Cuál es nuestro caso de uso principal?

Somos una ONG que incluye un programa académico de actualización de la formación en salud para los profesionales de la salud, como los médicos. MATRIX LMS es la herramienta que nos ayuda con esto.

Adicionalmente, lo utilizamos para que los empleados de nuestra organización tomen cursos de cumplimiento.

¿Cómo ha ayudado a mi organización?

Una de las formas en que MATRIX LMS ha mejorado nuestra organización es mediante el ahorro de costos. Nuestra organización cuenta con un programa académico para formar profesionales de la salud. La capacitación presencial tiene un costo, mientras que tener los cursos archivados en la plataforma nos permite llegar a un mayor número de personas al mismo tiempo. Calculo que nos ha ayudado a ahorrar un 40 por ciento en nuestros costos. Y con respecto a las instalaciones de entrenamiento o los viajes involucrados en el entrenamiento, nos ahorra el 100 por ciento.

Los médicos y estudiantes de salud deben tener algunos formularios disponibles y con esta plataforma los tienen disponibles en línea sin necesidad de imprimirlos, lo que se traduce en un ahorro de costos. Además, todas las valoraciones también quedan archivadas en la plataforma. Tenemos que hacer evaluaciones al principio y al final de cada curso y el sistema es un instrumento que agiliza nuestras actividades.

Otro beneficio es que los estudiantes tienen el contenido disponible cuando lo necesitan. Debido a que trabajamos con maestros de salud, y estas personas necesitan cosas en un formato determinado y también tienen que saber cómo completar ese formato, MATRIX LMS nos permite alojar esos formatos allí y resaltarlos, junto con instrucciones sobre cómo usarlos. y el contenido siempre está disponible.

¿Qué es lo más valioso?

Estoy enamorado de MATRIX LMS. Para mí, es una plataforma que lo tiene todo. Es muy potente e intuitivo. Y debido a que es tan fácil de usar, permite que cualquier persona sin ningún conocimiento de las plataformas LMS pueda crear un curso, publicarlo y monitorearlo.

Una de las cosas que más me gustan es la preparación de los cursos y los recursos que tiene la plataforma para llevarlos a cabo.

Otra característica atractiva es el hecho de que puede descargar informes y tenerlos disponibles para las muchas auditorías que se realizan. Estos informes proporcionan una indicación de los pasos dados en la plataforma.

En términos de automatización, utilizo mensajes de recordatorio para advertir a los participantes sobre el tiempo que les queda para completar un curso. Aunque la formación es autogestionada, tenemos un límite de tiempo para realizar el curso. Si las personas permanecen inactivas durante semanas, se les envía automáticamente un mensaje de recordatorio para informarles que se acerca la fecha límite para tomar los cursos. También hay automatización para diferentes rutas de aprendizaje, pero sobre todo, la capacidad de enviar recordatorios es genial.

Para mí es muy importante que el sistema de reglas ayude a personalizar el contenido porque tenemos diferentes niveles para diferentes perfiles dentro de esta academia. Tenemos perfiles que tienen una preparación académica media y otros que son expertos, por lo que no pueden tener las mismas competencias. Personalizar estas habilidades nos ayudará a tener un mayor control sobre lo que las personas están aprendiendo y el contenido que van a digerir.

Usando la plataforma, también puedo ver quién no ha accedido al portal y hacer un seguimiento con ellos. Esa es una de las ventajas que más me gusta de MATRIX: puedo validar el progreso de las personas y ver la cantidad de veces que han ingresado al portal. Cuando se trata de permitirme monitorear y verificar el progreso de los estudiantes, en una escala de uno a 10, le doy un 20. Es muy bueno. Siempre que doy una introducción sobre lo que es MATRIX LMS para mí, menciono que es una plataforma con herramientas de monitoreo. Me ayuda a ver una contabilidad honesta del progreso de un estudiante.

¿Qué necesita mejorar?

Algo que siempre me ha causado un poco de preocupación es en relación a la visibilidad de los usuarios, ya que MATRIX LMS identifica a los usuarios solo por sus correos electrónicos. Una de las cosas en las que me gustaría ver mejoras es en la detección de usuarios duplicados, identificándolos por sus nombres y no solo por sus direcciones de correo electrónico. Muchas personas cambian sus direcciones de correo electrónico, pero no sabemos si lo han hecho. Esto puede resultar en una duplicación innecesaria de cuentas de usuario.

¿Por cuánto tiempo he usado la solución?

He estado usando MATRIX LMS de CYPHER LEARNING durante dos años.

¿Qué pienso sobre la estabilidad de la solución?

Hasta ahora, solo hemos tenido un problema una vez en el que perdimos algunas cuentas. Antes de mi llegada había 10 administradores y muchos de ellos habían salido de la institución pero aún tenían cuentas activas. Me di cuenta de que muchos de estos usuarios habían modificado los datos archivados sin consultarnos. Al hablar con el equipo de soporte de CYPHER LEARNING, pudimos obtener toda la información que se había perdido. Esa fue la única situación inusual que nos ha pasado usando el sistema.

¿Qué opino de la escalabilidad de la solución?

En términos de escalabilidad, le daría una puntuación del 100 por ciento. No soy parte del equipo de publicidad de MATRIX LMS, pero sinceramente me encanta. Tiene actualizaciones constantes y está mejorando cada vez más.

Incluyendo estudiantes y personal, tenemos alrededor de 850 usuarios, que consisten en instructores, el equipo de administración, el director y un gerente. Se está usando bastante. De hecho, el uso ha aumentado recientemente, ya que descubrimos que teníamos muchos más estudiantes activos de lo que pensábamos.

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

El soporte técnico de la solución es excelente. Responden súper rápido. Haces cualquier pregunta a través de la página de soporte y siempre recibes una respuesta rápida. El equipo siempre está atento y da respuestas satisfactorias.

¿Cómo calificaría el servicio y soporte al cliente?

Positivo

¿Cómo fue la configuración inicial?

No formaba parte de la organización cuando se implementó la plataforma. Entiendo que una persona fue contratada para hacer ese trabajo. Cuando comencé aquí, la organización ya tenía un tiempo con la plataforma. Tenía conocimiento de otras plataformas con las que había trabajado y así fue como comencé a configurar mejor esta plataforma. Para mí, fue bastante simple.

La persona que estaba haciendo mi trabajo lo pasaba mal ya que nunca había trabajado con una plataforma LMS y no sabía cómo manejar las funciones de MATRIX LMS. Me comuniqué con su equipo de soporte porque era la primera vez que trabajaba con el sistema y el soporte fue tan bueno que en un mes ya entendía cómo usar la plataforma. El proceso fue simple y bastante fácil de usar.

Tenemos dos personas para la administración de la plataforma, el subadministrador que es el administrador del programa y yo como administradora.

¿Cuál fue nuestro Retorno de Inversión?

El presupuesto requerido para capacitar a la cantidad de personas que capacitamos en un mes, usando MATRIX LMS, nos tomaría un año para capacitarlos sin la plataforma.

Otra forma en que vemos un retorno de la inversión es el hecho de que no tenemos que imprimir tantos materiales. El ahorro de tiempo también vale mucho para nosotros. Ahora, podemos invertir nuestro tiempo en otras actividades.

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

Siempre recomiendo a mis compañeros de otras instituciones que utilicen MATRIX LMS. La calidad hace que el costo valga la pena.

¿Qué otras soluciones evalué?

Si no recuerdo mal, evaluaron Canvas, Moodle y otros.

MATRIX LMS es una plataforma más poderosa y tiene todo lo que necesitamos. Es fácil de usar y podemos hacer nuestros cursos sin necesidad de un tercero. Tiene la capacidad de almacenar lo que necesitamos y tiene muchos recursos. Realmente es una muy buena plataforma.

¿Qué otro consejo tengo?

El motor de reglas ayuda a personalizar el contenido en función de los objetivos y el rendimiento de los usuarios, aunque no trabajamos por competencias porque es un recurso que no hemos profundizado en la plataforma. Gracias al equipo de soporte técnico de la solución he podido explorar mejor la plataforma. Vamos a utilizar todo el tema de las competencias en el futuro. De hecho, ahora tenemos un curso que va a apoyar a una organización que es aliada nuestra y vamos a explorar el tema de competencias para ello.

CYPHER LEARNING ha realizado muchas actualizaciones en la plataforma, pero no creo que haya visto nuevas eficiencias para nuestros procesos. Lo que más me gusta de las nuevas funciones es el entorno gamificado. Eso hace que alcanzar nuestros objetivos sea más fácil.

A pesar de que estamos en una pandemia, podemos seguir actualizando a las personas, capacitándolas y teniendo los materiales listos para cuando quieran usarlos, a través de cualquier dispositivo.

MATRIX LMS es una plataforma que vale la pena probar. Es así de simple. Le doy un 20 sobre 10.

We've been using it for the delivery of our learning materials as well as for assessments of our students. Similarly, if training has to be conducted for our employees, including faculty members and school staff, all the materials are readily available in our LMS.

We have saved a lot as far as courier services are concerned. In the past, before CYPHER Learning, we would burn our materials onto CDs and send them out across the country via courier. With the LMS, all our materials are uploaded and they are almost instantaneously available for access within our school.

Apart from those costs, it has saved us time. We had a procedure where our materials would be posted on OneDrive and then one person was responsible for accessing and distributing them in each of our schools. With CYPHER Learning, we have been able to cut out that step. Now, when we develop the materials in our headquarters, the faculty members are able to access them instantaneously. By removing that interim step, we have saved man-hours. Administratively, CYPHER Learning has helped us save time.

It has also definitely helped us to save costs related to the printing of materials because we no longer print our materials. Teachers and students get access to them through their devices.

We also make use of other solutions to help address higher-order thinking skills, and CYPHER Learning supports that. Activities that help our students achieve or acquire higher-order thinking are very important because that's how we make sure that we prepare our students. That's how we ascertain that we are delivering quality education to our students and that they are really achieving the intended learning outcomes of the particular program they are enrolled in.

There are several valuable features. One is the competency mapping. This helps us, as faculty members and developers of learning materials, track and monitor which competencies our students have acquired, based on the outcomes that we wanted them to have at the end of a particular module or term.

And tagging classes and assignments with competencies is user-friendly, from the feedback I get from my team. There are options for whether it is a required module or assignment. Is it something that they can do on their own? It can be tagged such that it will only be given on a particular day. All of these types of tagging features are available. You just upload your materials and tag them to be, for example, self-paced or on a particular schedule. Then you just leave it and it unhides a particular module when a student has to complete it.

The tagging and the achievement of competencies, together, are almost always seamless. When you tag a particular competency in the mapping in a module, the student really has to achieve it. The competency mapping will show if they have reached a particular level of competency, because the mapping of achievements is color-coded. Teachers know when a student is still in the red zone, orange zone, or has reached the green zone. The modules in CYPHER Learning are well thought out. This feature is user-friendly for the teacher, and the students, as the end-users of the materials, are also able to see their progress.

Also, there are different types of learning materials that we can put in the LMS. Some are web-based, meaning we can embed a URL in the system, and it automatically leads the student or the user to the online materials we're going to use.

And on the dashboards, we are able to see the progress of our students, such as whether they have been able to do their assignments or homework and submit everything that they have to submit.

In addition, the adaptive learning is a feature that I really appreciate. Especially when the pandemic happened and classes were mostly asynchronous, we populated our library of materials. If a student had not yet reached a particular grade or level to proceed to the next module, we gave them additional modules to watch, read, and practice on, to better understand things. They would not proceed to the next level or module until they were able to earn a particular score. That's how we apply adaptive learning. This feature was something that we always wanted CYPHER Learning to have, but they went full-scale with it only recently. It has really helped us make sure that everybody is on the right track in mastering, or at least acquiring, fundamental knowledge and skills before they proceed to the next module.

We also do make use of the solution's competency-based learning, which is another feature they just introduced recently. It will help bridge the gap between what industries need when our students graduate and they join the workforce, and what we teach them in the classroom. It's something that we are exploring at the moment, and it's something that we've always wanted to have. The goal is that the students, when they graduate, will be able to show a portfolio of the competencies that they needed to acquire during their time with STI.

Communication through CYPHER Learning is just like on any other multimedia platform. Anything that has to do with schoolwork or official communication has to go through the CYPHER Learning or Microsoft Office. CYPHER Learning is like their Facebook for school. This communication is very important because there are a lot of things that come from our headquarters that have to cascade to the schools. The LMS helps us eliminate the transfer of communication from one person to another. When there are announcements that have to be done network-wide, CYPHER Learning helps ease that communication between head office and the entire network. We don't have to worry about the possibility that something was never relayed to the students or faculty members.

Most of our wish list for CYPHER Learning has already been addressed. One that we are still asking them for is to include competencies from different industries, since they have industry partners. These would be the competencies that these industries need so that we can make sure that we are developing our students toward those competencies or skill sets. 

Also, because the competency mapping feature is very well thought out, our wish list also includes that when our students graduate, they are able to print, download, or access the competencies that they have achieved in the four years that they studied with us at STI. That portfolio could then be shown when they apply for a job, and employers would see that it has been mapped out according to the industry's standards.

I have been using CYPHER LEARNING since 2016.

It's scalable because when we have requests they're able to find solutions or they tell us it's something they're considering. CYPHER LEARNING is able to address the needs of its clients.

We have 91,000 users of CYPHER Learning. There are 63 campuses of STI that are using it. You can just imagine how confident we are with CYPHER Learning because 91,000 of our students are using it every single day of their lives at school.

As far as our learning materials and assessments go, we really make use of the platform and, therefore, students have to use it. Everything is there. Teachers should be giving their assignments through CYPHER Learning, but of course, sometimes they don't. But the idea is they should be using it.

CYPHER LEARNING has very good customer support. Sometimes, because of their number of customers, it takes a little bit longer for them to reply to us. Sometimes, it takes them a week to reply to us, but those are rare cases. Most of the time, when our team chats with them, they are able to get back to us pretty quickly. Very seldom do they need to ask me to escalate an issue to one of their senior staff. They're able to address our concerns.

Positive

We didn't have a previous solution.

We have seen ROI because we have been able to cut down on time, courier services, freight, and the time it takes for things to travel from one campus to another. It is really the time savings that have been very good and important for us.

CYPHER LEARNING is very flexible when it comes to pricing. They hear out their customers and see where they can help them as far as cost is concerned. They look at long-term relationships and partnerships with their clients. It's very easy to talk to them regarding the cost and tell them why we can only afford a particular price bracket. When we explain that to them, they are able to adjust. At the end of the day, they are really looking to build and keep relationships and partnerships with their clients.

We evaluated two or three other solutions. And we are still evaluating different solutions when they approach us, but CYPHER Learning still stands when it comes to modules, features, benefits, and costs.

If you're looking into a product like this, you first have to understand what you want from an LMS. There is no one-size-fits-all for a particular institution. You have to list what your non-negotiables are, and then make sure that the provider is able to give you the things on that list.

It's also very important when you are deciding on an LMS that the team presenting it to you knows what they're talking about and that they'll take care of you. Some will present a solution to you, but when you ask a question they're not confident in their answers. That's a red light for me.

As for gamification, it is something that helps students learn, but we have discovered that it's not a silver bullet. You cannot gamify everything. It is something that helps engage students in their learning, however, it cannot be the only approach. You really have to know what your objectives and outcomes are and then include gamification. Otherwise, it will just be something that the students will take advantage of, and they will no longer learn. It becomes repetitive for them.

Gamification is nice because it drives and motivates students, but you have to vary gamification modules with other types of delivery. We tried dashboards and leaderboards, but sometimes students aren't motivated by those either. You have to strike a balance. It's nice to have, but are we able to achieve the intended learning outcome?

We have to keep on exploring things because CYPHER Learning has a lot of modules that we can utilize. And I really appreciate their management. They're so easy to talk to. When we need something, they're able to discuss it with us and help us find solutions. They're very easy to talk to, as long as they understand where you're coming from.

Overall, it's a very well-thought-out solution. I am thankful to Graham [the founder] and the team at CYPHER LEARNING. They're very dynamic. They keep their ears to the ground regarding what their clients need. It's a very stable company.

We used to have a traditional education system before the pandemic, but because of the pandemic, we had to reach students in a different way. That was when we engaged CYPHER Learning as a platform to help us continue our teaching and learning processes. Thanks to this platform, the students continued their education.

With CYPHER Learning's automation, students are aware of what they are going to do. They see the assignments and their achievements and they know their own grades. In other words, they regulate their learning pace by themselves.

For us as teachers, the adaptive learning has allowed us to make decisions regarding the progress of students, including their achievements and skills. This helps regulate the progress of the semester.

The solution’s competency-based learning helps us understand what percentage of the activities the student has exploited among those that the teacher has uploaded to the platform. This information allows us to understand a lot about the interaction that teachers have with students.

Lately, we are focusing on formative evaluation, which is an evaluation of the process through which the student acquires the skills and we receive feedback regarding the student’s situation. The ability to tag classes and assignments with competencies is very good because in our country we work under a system based on competencies and formative evaluation. The fact that teachers can attach competencies and qualification scales to the activities that they program in their rubrics, helps indicate development and reinforce our teaching style.

And thanks to the formative evaluation that CYPHER Learning has provided us with, students now know why they have been qualified in certain criteria. The data is in front of them.

Each teacher who designs a course takes into account the skills and recommendations that students have to meet. Each activity is designed based on the competencies record. The student must be aware of what he is going to learn, so this tool is very important.

It helps students develop their independence. Little by little, the teachers are learning that the students want autonomy and independence in each activity.
It is a sequence that all teachers manage. And the students already understand that the platform has the instructions they need and helps them regulate autonomy and time management.

The platform has given us a space to manage things in an organized manner with consistent dynamics. If it were not for CYPHER Learning, everyone would look for their own learning platform.

And when it comes to intervention strategies for students, it helps save time because tools such as direct messaging enable providing feedback to students who are having difficulties. Teachers can redirect the activity or their explanations and that helps facilitate the learning process. Not all students quickly understand the message. The way CYPHER Learning messages work facilitates interaction between the teacher and the student.

When it comes to administrative and bureaucratic work, a teacher makes his class and uploads it to CYPHER Learning. The advisor supervises the class and gives feedback on his behalf, which makes the process easier. We are still learning about CYPHER Learning's dynamic environment, but we have saved about 70 percent in time on administrative work.

Another advantage of CYPHER Learning, because it supports a good amount of data, is that we can avoid the use of physical textbooks. Before we implemented CYPHER Learning, school accessories cost parents 1,500 soles. Now, the cost is 500 or 800 soles because there is no need to buy books.

Other benefits include the fact that the communication with students is through a single platform. All students are aware of the importance of the use of CYPHER Learning for hybrid and face-to-face classes. And through the supervision and monitoring of teachers through the platform, the advisor in each area can investigate what the teacher's work is like. 

It has definitely helped our school a lot. It is a very powerful LMS.

This platform not only allows you to transmit the content in an agile and interactive way, but you can also interact with the students and keep them up to date. It is a platform that provides communication with the student, not only academically but also personally.

It's very easy for educators to communicate with students. It's part of the school's "DNA." CYPHER Learning is our only platform for contact with students. We have another platform but it is more for announcements and institutional issues. CYPHER Learning is the meeting space between teachers and students. It’s the main provider of content, evaluations, structure, and design of classes.

The tool that we use the most is personalizing the content with the students and doing inverted learning. As a teacher, I upload my material to the platform with all the detailed activities, links, and feedback. I use it more than anything to plan my classes, and so that the students know the objective of the class and achieve it.

And the solution's automation for helping show or hide specific class sections or assignments is very good. It is a very transparent and intuitive platform with various tools to help students.

Also, the ability of teachers to track student progress on a competency basis through a mastery grid is very important. All teachers have to manage and take advantage of the information they receive from CYPHER Learning. The more automated CYPHER Learning is in terms of achievements, the more the information will be useful for the teacher when continuing to design classes, giving feedback to the students, and continuing with formative assessment.

It is also important that CYPHER Learning has a link with other platforms such as Zoom, AMCO, et cetera. The ability that it has to connect with other tools that help enrich the teaching and learning process is great. Many teachers use various gamified processes to teach their classes, such as video, a song, or a canvas.

Perhaps there could be advances in artificial intelligence with more precise and immediate automated reports so that teachers have reports at hand. That would make things easier and would speed up processes.

We are a private school in Lima and we have been using CYPHER Learning since 2021.

The stability of this solution is excellent. It has enabled virtual, blended, hybrid, and face-to-face education, in an optimal way. In our almost three years of use, there have only been two or three network drops. That is not an alarming amount, and with CYPHER Learning we get immediate feedback and support.

We do not know 100 percent of CYPHER Learning yet. We continue training teachers in its use and exploitation, but we see that CYPHER Learning is evolving even more to provide us with more tools. Our goal at the moment is that CYPHER Learning will meet a national standard and become an official system of evaluation, according to the Peruvian rating system. We have high expectations that CYPHER Learning will continue to respond to all our needs.

We are empowering teachers more and more in the use of the platform. Students receive all content through CYPHER Learning. Our goal is to reach the parents of the students more and involve them more in the platform. We have plans to increase the use of CYPHER Learning with the families of students. They still don't understand exactly what CYPHER Learning is.

And as a network of various Franciscan schools, we also want our other schools to be able to access this platform.

We have approximately 140 users: teachers, assistants, advisory teachers who are the monitors, and our deputy directors. It has allowed us to increase staff. Student and parent users add many more to that count.

The technical support is quite agile. The school's systems team has constant communication with CYPHER Learning. In fact, at first, we didn't use their support that much, but CYPHER LEARNING has opened the channels of communication between the school and its technical support team and that has been very beneficial for us.

Their support is getting better and better. We are only now beginning to get to know the representatives.

Positive

There is a Peruvian platform called SieWeb that we used to communicate with students, but it did not have the CYPHER Learning's agility to interact with students. 

We learned about CYPHER Learning due to the pandemic. It is an LMS platform and SieWeb is not. It has completely different capabilities in terms of uploading content, design, interaction, training, work, et cetera.

It did not take us long. We looked at other institutions that already had the platform and we quickly became familiar with it. The platform is very intuitive, and our objective is to learn and exploit it much more.

Setting up the design and the user interface took us a month. The pandemic began on March 12 and, two weeks later, we returned to classes. At the beginning of the pandemic, each one of us went for various virtual spaces, but it was quickly decided to implement CYPHER Learning. The part that took the longest was the uploading of data.

At first, we trained the teachers, students, and their families too. We created tutorials and guidelines for teachers on how to use the platform so that all the teachers could handle things in the same way.

We hired a consultant who had experience with CYPHER Learning at another institution. The system engineers (tech team) helped in the development of tutorials and explained how to access the platform and use it. We had a good experience with the consultant. He arrived at the time we needed him most.

He presented us with different proposals on how to design our LMS environment and we adapted it to our objectives.

In terms of staff involved in addition to the consultant, there were the three systems engineers and a quality coordinator.

The return on investment is in CYPHER Learning's ability to adapt to different educational service modalities, save paper costs, enable student interaction with other virtual environments, monitor the work of teachers on the platform, and much more.

We thought about Google Classroom as, in the beginning, several teachers opted for that platform, but it seemed to us that CYPHER Learning would be a unifying space. It has the versatility to link to other tools. And its evaluation system, rubrics, feedback features, and instant messaging are things that CYPHER Learning handles really well.

We have been using this platform for almost three years and we are exploring it a bit more every day. We still haven't mastered all of the tools it has to offer. Students usually say that use of the platform is very practical and functional.

We did a survey in the school and a large percentage of our teachers access CYPHER Learning daily, between two and three times, which means that the use of CYPHER Learning is very beneficial and helps us save a great deal of time. We have also evaluated it with families through surveys and the satisfaction is high.

CYPHER Learning has all the functionality to keep students at the same level, but it is the teacher's duty to make the most of those features. Logically, not all students are at the same level, but if the teacher uses 100 percent of CYPHER Learning's functionalities, students can achieve a very balanced learning pace.

If you want a space that allows you to work on skills, formative evaluation, the interaction between teachers and students, and that gives you the ability to reinforce learning, CYPHER Learning is a very good tool. It can be customized according to the needs of your organization.

Foreign Language:(Spanish)

¿Cuál es nuestro caso de uso principal?

Solíamos tener un sistema de educación tradicional antes de la pandemia, pero debido a la pandemia, tuvimos que llegar a los estudiantes de una manera diferente. Fue entonces cuando contratamos a CYPHER Learning como plataforma para ayudarnos a continuar con nuestros procesos de enseñanza y aprendizaje. Gracias a esta plataforma, los estudiantes continuaron su educación.

¿Cómo ha ayudado a mi organización?

Con la automatización de CYPHER Learning, los alumnos son conscientes de lo que van a hacer. Ven las tareas y sus logros y saben sus propias calificaciones. En otras palabras, ellos mismos regulan su ritmo de aprendizaje.

Para nosotros como docentes, el aprendizaje adaptativo nos ha permitido tomar decisiones respecto al progreso de los estudiantes, incluyendo sus logros y habilidades. Esto ayuda a regular el progreso del semestre.

El aprendizaje basado en competencias de la solución nos ayuda a entender qué porcentaje de las actividades ha explotado el alumno entre las que ha subido el profesor a la plataforma. Esta información nos permite entender mucho sobre la interacción que tienen los docentes con los estudiantes.

Últimamente nos estamos enfocando en la evaluación formativa, que es una evaluación del proceso a través del cual el estudiante adquiere las habilidades y recibimos retroalimentación sobre la situación del estudiante. La posibilidad de etiquetar clases y trabajos con competencias es muy buena porque en nuestro país trabajamos bajo un sistema basado en competencias y evaluación formativa. El hecho de que los docentes puedan adjuntar escalas de competencias y calificaciones a las actividades que programan en sus rúbricas, ayuda a indicar el desarrollo y reforzar nuestro estilo de enseñanza.

Y gracias a la evaluación formativa que nos ha proporcionado CYPHER Learning, los alumnos ahora saben por qué han sido calificados en determinados criterios. Los datos están frente a ellos.

Cada profesor que diseña un curso tiene en cuenta las habilidades y recomendaciones que los alumnos tienen que cumplir. Cada actividad se diseña en base al registro de competencias. El alumno debe ser consciente de lo que va a aprender, por lo que esta herramienta es muy importante.

Ayuda a los estudiantes a desarrollar su independencia. Poco a poco los profesores van aprendiendo que los alumnos quieren autonomía e independencia en cada actividad.

Es una secuencia que manejan todos los profesores. Y los alumnos ya entienden que la plataforma tiene las instrucciones que necesitan y les ayuda a regular la autonomía y la gestión del tiempo.

La plataforma nos ha dado un espacio para gestionar las cosas de manera organizada con una dinámica consistente. Si no fuera por CYPHER Learning, cada uno buscaría su propia plataforma de aprendizaje.

Y cuando se trata de estrategias de intervención para los estudiantes, ayuda a ahorrar tiempo porque herramientas como la mensajería directa permiten brindar retroalimentación a los estudiantes que tienen dificultades. Los profesores pueden redirigir la actividad o sus explicaciones y eso ayuda a facilitar el proceso de aprendizaje. No todos los estudiantes entienden rápidamente el mensaje. CYPHER Learning facilita el funcionamiento de los mensajes y la interacción entre el profesor y el alumno.

Cuando se trata de trabajo administrativo y burocrático, un docente hace su clase y la sube a CYPHER Learning. El asesor supervisa la clase y da retroalimentación en su nombre, lo que facilita el proceso. Todavía estamos aprendiendo sobre el entorno dinámico de CYPHER Learning, pero hemos ahorrado alrededor del 70 por ciento de tiempo en trabajo administrativo.

Otra de las ventajas de CYPHER Learning, ya que soporta una buena cantidad de datos, es que podemos evitar el uso de libros de texto físicos. Antes de implementar CYPHER Learning, los accesorios escolares costaban a los padres 1.500 soles. Ahora el costo es de 500 u 800 soles porque no hay necesidad de comprar libros.

Otros beneficios incluyen el hecho de que la comunicación con los estudiantes es a través de una única plataforma. Todos los alumnos son conscientes de la importancia del uso de CYPHER Learning para las clases híbridas y presenciales. Y a través de la supervisión y seguimiento de los docentes a través de la plataforma, el asesor de cada área puede investigar cómo es el trabajo del docente.

Definitivamente ha ayudado mucho a nuestra escuela. Es un LMS muy potente.

¿Qué es lo más valioso?

Esta plataforma no solo te permite transmitir el contenido de forma ágil e interactiva, sino que también puedes interactuar con los alumnos y mantenerlos actualizados. Es una plataforma que facilita la comunicación con el alumno, no solo a nivel académico sino también personal.

Es muy fácil para los educadores comunicarse con los estudiantes. Es parte del "ADN" de la escuela. CYPHER Learning es nuestra única plataforma de contacto con los estudiantes. Tenemos otra plataforma pero es más para anuncios y temas institucionales. CYPHER Learning es el espacio de encuentro entre profesores y alumnos. Es el principal proveedor de contenidos, evaluaciones, estructura y diseño de clases.

La herramienta que más utilizamos es personalizar el contenido con los alumnos y hacer un aprendizaje invertido. Como docente, subo mi material a la plataforma con todas las actividades detalladas, enlaces y comentarios. Lo uso más que nada para planificar mis clases, y para que los alumnos conozcan el objetivo de la clase y lo consigan.

Y la automatización de la solución para ayudar a mostrar u ocultar secciones o tareas específicas de la clase es muy buena. Es una plataforma muy transparente e intuitiva con varias herramientas para ayudar a los estudiantes.

Además, la capacidad de los maestros para realizar un seguimiento del progreso de los estudiantes en función de las competencias a través de una tabla de dominio es muy importante. Todos los docentes tienen que gestionar y aprovechar la información que reciben de CYPHER Learning. Cuanto más automatizado esté CYPHER Learning en cuanto a logros, más útil será la información para el profesor a la hora de seguir diseñando clases, retroalimentando a los alumnos y continuando con la evaluación formativa.

También es importante que CYPHER Learning tenga enlace con otras plataformas como Zoom, AMCO, etcétera. La capacidad que tiene para conectarse con otras herramientas que ayudan a enriquecer el proceso de enseñanza y aprendizaje es muy buena. Muchos profesores utilizan varios procesos gamificados para impartir sus clases, como un vídeo, una canción o un canva.

¿Qué necesita mejorar?

Quizás podría haber avances en inteligencia artificial con informes automatizados más precisos e inmediatos para que los docentes tengan informes a mano. Eso facilitaría las cosas y aceleraría los procesos.

¿Por cuánto tiempo he usado la solución?

Somos una escuela privada en Lima y usamos CYPHER Learning desde 2021.

¿Qué pienso sobre la estabilidad de la solución?

La estabilidad de esta solución es excelente. Ha posibilitado la educación virtual, semipresencial, híbrida y presencial, de manera óptima. En nuestros casi tres años de uso, solo ha habido dos o tres caídas de red. Esa no es una cantidad alarmante, y con CYPHER Learning recibimos respuestas y apoyo inmediatos.

¿Qué opino de la escalabilidad de la solución?

Todavía no conocemos el 100 por ciento de CYPHER Learning. Seguimos capacitando a los docentes en su uso y explotación, pero vemos que CYPHER Learning evoluciona aún más para brindarnos más herramientas. Nuestro objetivo en este momento es que CYPHER Learning cumpla con un estándar nacional y se convierta en un sistema oficial de evaluación, según el sistema de calificación peruano. Tenemos altas expectativas de que CYPHER Learning seguirá respondiendo a todas nuestras necesidades.

Estamos empoderando cada vez más a los docentes en el uso de la plataforma. Los estudiantes reciben todo el contenido a través de CYPHER Learning. Nuestro objetivo es llegar más a los padres de los alumnos e involucrarlos más en la plataforma. Tenemos planes para aumentar el uso de CYPHER Learning con las familias de los estudiantes. Todavía no entienden exactamente qué es CYPHER Learning.

Y como red de varios colegios franciscanos, también queremos que nuestros otros colegios puedan acceder a esta plataforma.

Contamos con aproximadamente 140 usuarios: docentes, auxiliares, docentes asesores que son los monitores y nuestros subdirectores. Nos ha permitido aumentar más en cuanto a personal. Los usuarios estudiantes y padres agregan muchos más a ese conteo.

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

El soporte técnico es bastante ágil. El equipo de sistemas de la escuela tiene comunicación constante con CYPHER Learning. De hecho, al principio no usamos mucho su apoyo, pero CYPHER LEARNING ha abierto los canales de comunicación entre la escuela y su equipo de soporte técnico y eso ha sido muy beneficioso para nosotros.

Su apoyo es cada vez mejor. Recientemente estamos empezando a conocer a los representantes.

¿Cómo calificaría el servicio y soporte al cliente?

Positivo

¿Qué solución usé anteriormente y por qué cambié?

Hay una plataforma peruana llamada SieWeb que usábamos para comunicarnos con los estudiantes, pero no tenía la agilidad de CYPHER Learning para interactuar con los estudiantes.

Nos enteramos de CYPHER Learning debido a la pandemia. Es una plataforma LMS y SieWeb no lo es. Tiene capacidades completamente diferentes en cuanto a carga de contenido, diseño, interacción, capacitación, trabajo, etcétera.

¿Cómo fue la configuración inicial?

No nos tomó mucho tiempo. Miramos a otras instituciones que ya tenían la plataforma y rápidamente nos familiarizamos con ella. La plataforma es muy intuitiva, y nuestro objetivo es aprender y explotarla mucho más.

Configurar el diseño y la interfaz de usuario nos llevó un mes. La pandemia empezó el 12 de marzo y, dos semanas después, volvimos a clases. Al comienzo de la pandemia, cada uno de nosotros optó por varios espacios virtuales, pero rápidamente se decidió implementar CYPHER Learning. La parte que tomó más tiempo fue la carga de datos.

Al principio, capacitamos a los maestros, estudiantes y también a sus familias. Creamos tutoriales y pautas para profesores sobre cómo usar la plataforma para que todos los profesores pudieran manejar las cosas de la misma manera.

¿Y el equipo de implementación?

Contratamos a un consultor que tenía experiencia con CYPHER Learning en otra institución. Los ingenieros de sistemas (equipo técnico) ayudaron en el desarrollo de tutoriales y explicaron cómo acceder a la plataforma y usarla. Tuvimos una buena experiencia con el consultor. Llegó en el momento que más lo necesitábamos.

Nos presentó diferentes propuestas de cómo diseñar nuestro entorno LMS y lo adaptamos a nuestros objetivos.

En cuanto al personal involucrado, además del consultor, estaban los tres ingenieros de sistemas y un coordinador de calidad.

¿Cuál fue nuestro Retorno de Inversión?

El retorno de la inversión está en la capacidad de CYPHER Learning para adaptarse a diferentes modalidades de servicios educativos, ahorrar costos de papel, permitir la interacción de los estudiantes con otros entornos virtuales, monitorear el trabajo de los docentes en la plataforma y mucho más.

¿Qué otras soluciones evalué?

Pensamos en Google Classroom ya que, en un principio, varios docentes optaron por esa plataforma, pero nos pareció que CYPHER Learning sería un espacio unificador. Tiene la versatilidad de vincularse a otras herramientas. Y su sistema de evaluación, rúbricas, funciones de retroalimentación y mensajería instantánea son cosas que CYPHER Learning maneja muy bien.

¿Qué otro consejo tengo?

Llevamos casi tres años usando esta plataforma y cada día la exploramos un poco más. Todavía no hemos dominado todas las herramientas que tiene para ofrecer. Los estudiantes suelen decir que el uso de la plataforma es muy práctico y funcional.

Hicimos una encuesta en la escuela y un gran porcentaje de nuestros profesores acceden a CYPHER Learning diariamente, entre dos y tres veces, lo que significa que el uso de CYPHER Learning es muy beneficioso y nos ayuda a ahorrar mucho tiempo. También lo hemos evaluado con las familias a través de encuestas y la satisfacción es alta.

CYPHER Learning tiene todas las funcionalidades para mantener a los estudiantes al mismo nivel, pero es deber del docente aprovechar al máximo esas características. Lógicamente, no todos los alumnos están al mismo nivel, pero si el profesor utiliza el 100 por cien de las funcionalidades de CYPHER Learning, los alumnos pueden conseguir un ritmo de aprendizaje muy equilibrado.

Si quieres un espacio que te permita trabajar las competencias, la evaluación formativa, la interacción entre profesores y alumnos, y que te dé la capacidad de reforzar el aprendizaje, CYPHER Learning es una muy buena herramienta. Se puede personalizar de acuerdo a las necesidades de su organización.