CYPHER Learning Reviews

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I have been using it since August 2020.

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

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

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

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

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

Positive

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I would rate this solution as 8.5 out of 10.

Foreign Language: (Spanish)

¿Cuál es nuestra razón de uso principal?

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

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

¿Cómo ha ayudado a mi organización?

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

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

¿Qué es lo más valioso?

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

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

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

¿Qué necesita mejorar?

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

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

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

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

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

¿Por cuánto tiempo he usado la solución?

Lo uso desde agosto de 2020.

¿Qué pienso sobre la estabilidad de la solución?

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

¿Qué opino de la escalabilidad de la solución?

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

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

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

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

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

¿Cómo calificaría el servicio y soporte al cliente?

Positivo.

¿Qué solución usé anteriormente y por qué cambié?

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

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

¿Cómo fue la configuración inicial?

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

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

¿Y el equipo de implementación?

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

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

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

¿Cuál fue nuestro retorno de inversión?

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

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

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

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

¿Qué otras soluciones evaluaron?

Evaluamos Blackboard y comprobamos las últimas versiones de Moodle.

¿Qué otro consejo tengo?

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

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

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

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

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

Calificaría esta solución como 8.5 de 10.

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

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

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

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

I love their help center. 

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

I love the catalog feature. 

I love the support. 

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

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

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

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

We transitioned over to CYPHER Learning in 2020. 

It is very stable. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Positive

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I have been using CYPHER Learning for around 18 months.

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

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

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

We have about 100 internal users of the platform.

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

Positive

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I have been using CYPHER Learning for almost eight months.

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

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

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

Positive

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

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

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

The implementation was completed in-house.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CYPHER Learning has not required any maintenance as of yet.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Another feature is that it's simple to use.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Positive

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Neutral

We didn't previously use another solution.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I would rate this solution as seven out of 10.

Our working hypothesis was that in a scenario where the school would be closed to in-person classes for a long time due to COVID, we would need a professional online education system. We approached it as if we were never going to see face-to-face education again.

We feel that while other institutions have suffered a little more from the effects of the pandemic, the fact that we adopted and developed a platform that is very professional from the beginning, and exploited its resources to the maximum, enabled our institution to maintain a high level of education. We believe that in this year's national assessments, our school will continue to achieve first-place results.

We have been able to deliver our entire curriculum online for a year and a half. CYPHER Learning quickly solved the issue of having a means to deliver the curriculum. We have been able to focus, in the midst of the pandemic, on the well-being of the students, their emotional health, and support for parents. The level of learning has been quite high and the level of emotional control of the students is optimal.

We also feel that students feel safe. Something that has been quite surprising is the use of technology in the first grade with six-year-old students. We were a little skeptical about the technology issue for such young students. But with a little initial help from the parents, those students have become fluent in the use of the technology, like any other tool, and they move around it with ease. The level of autonomy that children can achieve is impressive.

The students flow with the platform, as it has a gamification process and stimuli. It engages very well with the essence of positive behavior reinforcement and allows me to recognize good work by students when it is done through the platform. And the synchronous work students do enables them to objectively see their own level of performance. They are also aware of being recognized by their teachers for their work, and this increases their engagement with the program.

The gamified learning environment allows us to create curricular spaces that are different from the traditional courses that the curriculum has. A teacher, for example, can decide to create a new workshop or specialization course for students who are interested in a specific subject. The teacher simply opens the channel and registers the students. They can choose that students from different grades interact with each other by sharing a course or a workshop, and this is interesting and novel.

CYPHER Learning has also significantly reduced paperwork for me, as well as the need for printing. There is less spending on paper supplies and CYPHER Learning is complemented by other tools that allow me to interact with students immediately. It has reduced my printing costs by about 60 percent.

Above all, what it has done is provide our team with more time available to focus on teaching and learning processes. It could help me reduce staff, but we have preferred to use the time it has freed up for our teachers to reinforce them in the pedagogical area. This is how we believe we will achieve better results.

The first point is the ease of use. It is a very easy platform to use, especially for students and families, with a very friendly layout.

It also has a series of support systems, including communication with parents, students, the ability to invoice for online courses, and other qualities that make the system very versatile and facilitate a teacher's work.

It has a good level of integration with different applications.

This LMS also allows us to do "differentiated instruction." It is a very effective tool for creating specific tactics that allow me to work with advanced students and with students who have learning difficulties. In this way, each student has an educational program focused on their personal characteristics. Thanks to this, our school has exceptionally high results on the Ministry of Education tests.

CYPHER Learning’s adaptive learning helps provide students optimal, personalized content based on their goals and performance. I really like this ability to adapt to the development of students. It is a contemporary feature, which should be pursued as an important educational process. It is making our work much easier.

The reports are fundamental. They have been super useful for personal follow-up with students. The fact that the system helps me to track the students in the delivery of work and the achievement of competencies allows our educational team to interact with the parents and children for cases in which special, focused help is necessary. This is very valuable. We have noticed in internal tests that students have achieved educational requirements though the distance-education system, and that the students are working hard. In other words, students who were experiencing some sort of void are filling that void by using this platform.

The fact that teachers can track student progress on a competency basis through a mastery grid makes our work much easier. Students are evaluated by their competencies, which is vital for us. It adapts very well to a modern teaching and assessment system. The assessment done with the platform meets contemporary demands and gives the school the opportunity to apply them. This is most advantageous.

It practically gives us another language for communication. As a director, I like to recognize students when they have achieved a good result or participated in a championship. Through CYPHER Learning, I am able to send them messages and I usually receive an immediate response from the students. In this way, as a director, I can quickly reach many people with a message of encouragement. It goes along with promoting positive behavior. This also includes students who have difficulty. If not for CYPHER Learning, I would have to go through a much more complex process to communicate with them.

CYPHER Learning provides a variety of activities to help engage students and develop their independence. We are a technological society that uses technology intensively. Introducing students to this system, beginning to automate certain teaching processes, and making it easier for students to access resources is something that is very relevant to the 21st century.

Furthermore, the solution's intervention strategies for students, especially for those who need guidance, are a great strength of this LMS. The fact that the platform allows me to create my own line of work helps a lot and enables students to achieve results and be recognized by the system for their successes. It is a fabulous tool. I put the work in place and students are quickly reacting and working. I can attend to it personally and help students advance in context.

The solution’s ability to bridge the learning gap for students is absolutely a great outcome and advantage. When students receive rapid feedback, they are always eager to excel in their studies and to advance. You create topics in which the level of difficulty increases, the student achieves the desired results, feels happy, advances, and the teacher can quickly recognize this.

I would like to see greater integration with some programs that are not natively integrated. Google is a standard. Everything integrates with it. Integration with Google is a key task.

Also, it would be interesting to have it integrate with the International Baccalaureate. There is a platform called ManageBac that has this type of integration. If CYPHER Learning would use that as a reference, it would increase its functionality and scalability.

We have been using CYPHER Learning for two and a half years.

We have never had stability problems with CYPHER Learning. Any downtime due to updates has always been preceded by notices, and the time the platform was in update mode was quite short so it has never been an obstacle.

When we started CYPHER Learning, it was as an individual school but we quickly scaled with CYPHER Learning so that all three schools in our group were incorporated. We made adjustments to share domains and the growth process went perfectly. If we had to open new offices, everything would be perfectly integrated.

Currently, we manage about 1,500 students as well as 180 teachers. In addition, there is administrative staff.

We are using it intensively at the moment because here, in the Peruvian system, if someone gets sick, the students and teacher in that classroom must go into lockdown for five days. That makes CYPHER Learning perfect for us.

We still have a long way to go to exploit all the resources that CYPHER Learning gives us. We know that it is a very extensive and powerful platform from which we have seen great benefit, but we can continue to explore and take much more advantage of it.

We have greatly appreciated the support we have received from the CYPHER Learning team. That has been vital for us. When we made the decision to work with CYPHER Learning, their staff was able to give us 24-hour assistance and, in four days, we had 85 percent of the school on the platform.

Positive

When it looked probable that the country would be affected by COVID and that we would not be able to have in-person classes, we first used Google Classroom and another platform. We then understood that we needed to have a professional platform.

We evaluated different platforms and we found that what CYPHER Learning offered was very interesting. The layout is very friendly and the tools are quite powerful. We also felt that there was a high level of support. For these reasons, we built our distance-learning system with CYPHER Learning.

The initial setup was easy, especially due to the support we received. In fact, when the lockdown came, we were making the decision to switch to CYPHER Learning but we had not yet registered our students. We were only at the stage of registering the lesson plans and the grading systems. They then suddenly announced that the lockdown was coming into effect in the next 24 hours. We had to register the students in bulk and we had difficulties transferring the CSV files. But with the help of CYPHER Learning's technical support, the problems were solved in a matter of two or three hours and, on the same day, we registered all our students in the system.

Overall, we had the system running in four days. Evidence of CYPHER Learning's versatility is in the fact that that was how long it took to have our school's entire educational system registered. It took us a total of seven days because we wanted to do internal tests, but that was proof, for me, of how flexible this solution is.

Once we created the environment, we had to integrate another school and this was done without any problems.

The deployment involved our head of technology, me as the director of studies, our three elementary and high school coordinators, and two support teachers who are strong in technology and academics.

Everything was done with the support of CYPHER Learning. We had some training which was admirable because, as we understood at that time, CYPHER Learning had a lot of pressure worldwide. We felt taken care of in every way.

We have also received communication from CYPHER Learning on the upgrades and developments.

CYPHER Learning is much more profitable. I know of other institutions that went with other solutions that took a long time to implement. With CYPHER Learning, I did not have to create layouts or environments and I did not have issues of organization or coordination. The management abilities CYPHER Learning provides allow you to quickly define grades, sections, groups of students, and to decide the layouts for each one. It is much easier.

For us, the return on investment was when the parents accepted the platform and recognized the work that was being done in the school during the lockdown. We did not experience a paralysis in education. We only had four days without classes, which was time we needed to refine the platform. When we started using CYPHER Learning, we had students working 100 percent. Some schools opted for synchronous teaching which is very tiring. We opted for mixed synchronous teaching and that helped prevent students from becoming tired, as well as their parents. The students could get the best out of themselves.

CYPHER Learning's price is good.

I don't think there are any other tools that could be better than the internal systems we have slowly and strategically built in CYPHER Learning. Before implementing, you have to be clear about your educational objectives and how your educational system operates internally. You need to have your pedagogical system organized. For an institution that is in the process of making changes, and looking for an opportunity to improve, this could be a very good opportunity.

What I have learned from using CYPHER Learning is that technology allows us to personalize and differentiate education much more. It helps us to achieve learning objectives more easily, when we use it well. It also provides great engagement for students with technology. High-achievers and students with difficulties are also better taken care of and given special attention.

Foreign Language: (Spanish)

¿Cuál es nuestra razón de uso principal?

Nuestra hipótesis de trabajo fue tener en mente la posibilidad de un evento en el que la escuela tuviera que cancelar las clases presenciales durante mucho tiempo debido al COVID. Necesitaríamos un sistema de educación en línea profesional. Lo abordamos como si nunca más fuéramos a optar por la educación presencial.

¿Cómo ha ayudado a mi organización?

Sentimos que mientras otras instituciones han sufrido un poco más los efectos de la pandemia, el hecho de que adoptamos y desarrollamos una plataforma que es muy profesional desde el principio y explotamos sus recursos al máximo, permitió que nuestra institución mantuviera un alto nivel de educación. Creemos que en las próximas evaluaciones nacionales de este año nuestra escuela continuará logrando resultados de primer lugar.

Hemos podido completar todo nuestro plan de estudios en línea en un año y medio. CYPHER Learning resolvió rápidamente el problema de tener un medio para impartir el plan de estudios. Hemos podido enfocarnos en medio de la pandemia en el bienestar de los estudiantes , en su salud emocional y el apoyo a los padres. El nivel de aprendizaje ha sido bastante alto y el nivel de control emocional de los alumnos es óptimo.

También sentimos que los estudiantes se sienten seguros. Algo que ha sido bastante sorprendente es el uso de la tecnología en los primeros grados con alumnos de seis años. Éramos un poco escépticos sobre el tema de la tecnología para estudiantes tan jóvenes. Pero con un poco de ayuda inicial de los padres, los estudiantes dominan el uso de la tecnología como cualquier otra herramienta, y se mueven con facilidad. El nivel de autonomía que pueden alcanzar los niños es impresionante.

Los estudiantes fluyen con la plataforma, ya que tiene un proceso de gamificación y estímulos. Se relaciona muy bien con la esencia del refuerzo positivo de la conducta y me permite reconocer el buen trabajo de los alumnos cuando se realiza a través de la plataforma. Y el trabajo sincrónico que realizan los estudiantes les permite ver objetivamente su propio nivel de desempeño. También son conscientes de ser reconocidos por sus profesores por su trabajo, y esto aumenta su compromiso con el programa.

El ambiente de aprendizaje gamificado nos permite crear espacios curriculares diferentes a los cursos tradicionales que tiene el currículo. Un profesor, por ejemplo, puede decidir crear un nuevo taller o curso de especialización para los estudiantes que estén interesados en un tema específico. El profesor simplemente abre el canal y registra a los estudiantes. Pueden elegir que alumnos de diferentes grados interactúen entre ellos compartiendo un curso o un taller, y esto es interesante y novedoso.

CYPHER Learning también me ha reducido significativamente el papeleo, así como la necesidad de imprimir. Hay menos gasto en suministros de papel y CYPHER Learning se complementa con otras herramientas que me permiten interactuar con los estudiantes de inmediato. Ha reducido los costos de impresión en aproximadamente un 60 por ciento.

Sobre todo, lo que ha hecho es dotar a nuestro equipo de más tiempo disponible para centrarse en los procesos de enseñanza y aprendizaje. Me podría ayudar a reducir personal, pero hemos preferido utilizar el tiempo que le ha liberado a nuestros profesores para reforzarlos en el área pedagógica. Así es como creemos que lograremos mejores resultados.

¿Qué es lo más valioso?

El primer punto es la facilidad de uso. Es una plataforma muy fácil de usar, especialmente para estudiantes y familias, con un diseño muy amigable.

También cuenta con una serie de sistemas de apoyo, entre los que se encuentran la comunicación con padres, alumnos, la posibilidad de facturar cursos online, y otras cualidades que hacen que el sistema sea muy versátil y facilite el trabajo del docente.

Tiene un buen nivel de integración con diferentes aplicaciones.

Este LMS también nos permite hacer "instrucción diferenciada". Es una herramienta muy efectiva para crear tácticas específicas que me permiten trabajar con alumnos avanzados y con alumnos que tienen dificultades de aprendizaje. De esta forma, cada alumno tiene un programa educativo enfocado a sus características personales. Gracias a esto, nuestra escuela tiene resultados excepcionalmente altos en las pruebas del Ministerio de Educación.

El aprendizaje adaptativo de CYPHER Learning ayuda a proporcionar a los estudiantes contenido óptimo y personalizado en función de sus objetivos y rendimiento. Me gusta mucho esta capacidad de adaptación al desarrollo de los alumnos. Es una característica contemporánea, que debe ser seguida como un importante proceso educativo. Está facilitando mucho nuestro trabajo.

Los informes son fundamentales. Han sido súper útiles para el seguimiento personal con los alumnos. El hecho de que el sistema me ayude a hacer un seguimiento de los alumnos en la entrega de trabajos y el logro de competencias permite que nuestro equipo educativo interactúe con los padres y los niños para los casos en que sea necesaria una ayuda especial y enfocada. Esto es muy valioso. Hemos notado en las pruebas internas que los estudiantes han logrado los requisitos educativos a través del sistema de educación a distancia y que están trabajando duro. En otras palabras, los estudiantes que experimentaron algún tipo de vacío están llenando ese vacío al usar esta plataforma.

El hecho de que los profesores puedan realizar un seguimiento del progreso de los estudiantes en función de las competencias a través de una cuadrícula de dominio hace que nuestro trabajo sea mucho más fácil. Los estudiantes son evaluados por sus competencias, lo cual es vital para nosotros. Se adapta muy bien a un sistema moderno de enseñanza y evaluación. La evaluación realizada con la plataforma responde a las demandas contemporáneas y le da a la escuela la oportunidad de aplicarlas.

Prácticamente nos da otro lenguaje para comunicarnos. Como director, me gusta reconocer a los alumnos cuando han logrado un buen resultado o han participado en un campeonato. A través de la plataforma CYPHER Learning, puedo enviarles mensajes y generalmente recibo una respuesta inmediata de los estudiantes. De esta manera, como director, puedo llegar rápidamente a muchas personas con un mensaje de aliento. Va junto con la promoción de un comportamiento positivo. Esto también incluye a los estudiantes que tienen dificultades. Si no fuera por CYPHER Learning, tendría que pasar por un proceso mucho más complejo para comunicarme con ellos.

CYPHER Learning ofrece una variedad de actividades para ayudar a involucrar a los estudiantes y desarrollar su independencia. Somos una sociedad tecnológica que utiliza la tecnología de forma intensiva. Introducir a los estudiantes en este sistema, comenzar a automatizar ciertos procesos de enseñanza y facilitar a los estudiantes el acceso a los recursos es algo muy relevante en el siglo XXI.

Además, las estrategias de intervención de la plataforma para los estudiantes, especialmente para aquellos que necesitan orientación, son una gran fortaleza de este LMS. El hecho de que la plataforma me permita crear mi propia línea de trabajo ayuda mucho y permite que los estudiantes logren resultados y sean reconocidos por el sistema por sus éxitos. Es una herramienta fabulosa. Subo los trabajos a las plataformas y los estudiantes reaccionan y trabajan rápidamente. Puedo atenderlo personalmente y ayudar a los estudiantes a avanzar en el contexto.

La capacidad de la solución para cerrar la diferencia de aprendizaje de los estudiantes es absolutamente un gran resultado y una gran ventaja. Cuando los estudiantes reciben retroalimentación rápida, siempre están ansiosos por sobresalir en sus estudios y avanzar. Primero se crean temas en los que aumenta el nivel de dificultad, después el alumno logra los resultados deseados, se siente feliz, avanza y el profesor puede reconocer estos logros rápidamente.

¿En qué necesita mejorar?

Me gustaría ver una mayor integración con algunos programas que no están integrados de forma nativa. Google es un estándar. Todo se integra con él. La integración con Google es una tarea clave.

Además, sería interesante que se integre con el Bachillerato Internacional. Hay una plataforma llamada ManageBac que tiene este tipo de integración. Si CYPHER Learning lo usara como referencia, aumentaría su funcionalidad y escalabilidad.

¿Por cuánto tiempo ha usado la solución?

Llevamos dos años y medio usando CYPHER Learning.

¿Qué piensa sobre la estabilidad de la solución?

Nunca hemos tenido problemas de estabilidad con CYPHER Learning. Cualquier tiempo de inactividad debido a actualizaciones siempre ha estado precedido por avisos, y el tiempo que la plataforma estuvo en modo de actualización fue bastante corto por lo que nunca ha sido un obstáculo.

¿Qué opino de la escalabilidad de la solución?

Cuando comenzamos a trabajar con CYPHER Learning, era usado solamente en una sede, pero escalamos rápidamente con CYPHER Learning para que se incorporará las tres sedes de nuestra institución. Hicimos ajustes para compartir dominios y el proceso de crecimiento fue perfecto. Si tuviéramos que abrir nuevas oficinas, todo estaría perfectamente integrado.

Actualmente, gestionamos alrededor de 1.500 estudiantes y 180 profesores. Además, hay personal administrativo.

Lo estamos usando de manera intensiva en este momento porque aquí, en el sistema peruano, si alguien se enferma, los estudiantes y el maestro de esa sala deben estar confinados durante cinco días. Eso hace que CYPHER Learning sea perfecto para nosotros.

Todavía nos queda mucho camino por recorrer para explotar todos los recursos que nos brinda CYPHER Learning. Sabemos que es una plataforma muy extensa y potente de la que hemos visto un gran beneficio, pero podemos seguir explorando y sacarle mucho más provecho.

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

Hemos apreciado mucho el apoyo que hemos recibido del equipo de CYPHER Learning. Eso ha sido vital para nosotros. Cuando tomamos la decisión de trabajar con CYPHER Learning, su personal pudo brindarnos asistencia las 24 horas. En solo cuatro días, teníamos el 85 por ciento de la escuela en la plataforma.

¿Cómo calificaría el servicio y soporte al cliente?

Positivo

¿Qué solución usé anteriormente y por qué cambié?

Cuando parecía probable que el país se vería afectado por el COVID y que no podríamos tener clases presenciales, primero usamos Google Classroom y otra plataforma. En ese momento entendimos que necesitábamos tener una plataforma profesional.

Evaluamos diferentes plataformas y descubrimos que lo que ofrecía CYPHER Learning era muy interesante. El diseño es muy amigable y las herramientas son bastante poderosas. También sentimos que hubo un alto nivel de apoyo. Por estas razones, construimos nuestro sistema de aprendizaje a distancia con CYPHER Learning.

¿Cómo fue la configuración inicial?

La configuración inicial fue fácil, especialmente debido al soporte que recibimos. De hecho, cuando llegó el confinamiento, justamente estábamos tomando la decisión de cambiar a CYPHER Learning pero aún no habíamos registrado a nuestros estudiantes. Estábamos solo en la etapa de registrar los planes de lecciones y los sistemas de calificación. De repente anunciaron sobre la confinación nacional que entraría en vigencia en las próximas 24 horas. Tuvimos que registrar a los estudiantes de forma masiva y tuvimos dificultades para transferir los archivos CSV. Pero con la ayuda del soporte técnico de CYPHER Learning, los problemas se solucionaron en cuestión de dos o tres horas y, en ese mismo día, registramos a todos nuestros alumnos en el sistema.

​​En general, tuvimos el sistema funcionando en cuatro días. La prueba de la versatilidad de CYPHER Learning es que ese fue el tiempo que tomó tener registrado todo el sistema educativo de nuestra escuela. Nos tomó un total de siete días porque queríamos hacer pruebas internas, pero esta fue la prueba, para mí, de qué tan flexible es esta plataforma.

Una vez que creamos el ambiente, tuvimos que integrar otra escuela y esto se hizo sin ningún problema.

El despliegue involucró a nuestro jefe de tecnología, a mi como director de estudios, nuestros tres coordinadores de primaria y secundaria y dos maestros de apoyo que controlan el área de la tecnología.

¿Y qué me puedes decir sobre el equipo de implementación?

Todo se hizo con el apoyo de CYPHER Learning. Tuvimos una formación que fue admirable porque, como entendíamos en ese momento, CYPHER Learning tenía mucha presión a nivel mundial. Nos sentimos atendidos en todos los sentidos.

También hemos recibido comunicación seguida de CYPHER Learning sobre las actualizaciones y desarrollos.

¿Cuál fue nuestro Retorno de Inversión?

CYPHER Learning es mucho más rentable. Sé de otras instituciones que optaron por otras soluciones que tardaron mucho en implementar. Con CYPHER Learning, no tuve que crear diseños o entornos y no tuve problemas de organización o coordinación. Las capacidades de gestión que proporciona CYPHER Learning te permiten definir rápidamente grados, secciones, grupos de alumnos y decidir la disposición de cada uno. Es mucho más fácil.

Para nosotros, el retorno de la inversión fue cuando los padres aceptaron la plataforma y reconocieron el trabajo que se estaba haciendo en la escuela durante el confinamiento. No experimentamos una parálisis en la educación. Solo tuvimos cuatro días sin clases, tiempo que necesitábamos para afinar la plataforma. Cuando comenzamos a usar CYPHER Learning, teníamos estudiantes trabajando al 100 por ciento. Algunas escuelas optaron por la enseñanza sincrónica que es muy agotadora. Nosotros optamos por la enseñanza síncrona mixta y eso ayudó a evitar que los alumnos se cansaran, al igual que sus padres. Los alumnos podían sacar lo mejor de sí mismos.

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

El precio de CYPHER Learning es bueno.

¿Qué otro consejo tengo?

No creo que haya otras herramientas que puedan ser mejores que los sistemas internos que hemos construido lenta y estratégicamente en CYPHER Learning. Antes de implementarlo, debe tener claro cuáles son sus objetivos educativos y cómo funciona internamente su sistema educativo. Necesitas tener tu sistema pedagógico organizado. Para una institución que está en proceso de cambios y buscando una oportunidad de mejora, esta podría ser una muy buena oportunidad.

Lo que he aprendido usando CYPHER Learning es que la tecnología nos permite personalizar y diferenciar mucho más la educación. Nos ayuda a lograr los objetivos de aprendizaje más fácil cuando lo usamos de forma correcta. También proporciona un gran compromiso para los estudiantes con la tecnología. Tanto los alumnos de alto rendimiento como los estudiantes con dificultades están mejor atendidos y reciben una atención especial.