The company I work for wants to purchase third party elearning content to incorporate with our new LMS. Mostly employee development and some basic computer skills courses. We are looking at Element K and SkillSoft. Does anyone have a preference?

Hi CMC,

Nice topic!

My company has been looking for some off-the-shelf content too, along the same lines. Time and time again SkillSoft is brought up. However, I've found the standard SkillSoft courses to be long, boring, hard to navigate the main menus, and not engaging in my opinion. Their audio is muffled and their serif text is fuzzy. User interaction is very minimal. It surprises me they are so popular - but maybe I'm missing something?

I will give them some credit though - the other day I did try out one of SkillSoft's simulations. It wasn't too bad!

It's been awhile since I saw Element K courses (probably 3 years) but if my memory serves me, they seemed much better all around. Granted, I only tried the courses relating to computer skills. I plan on doing another evaluation of their courses in the near future.

I'll be curious to see what others have to add.

To what extent is the blend of company specific content and generic content a factor? Are there certain LCMS/LMS systems that hook into Element K's and Skillsoft's courses and job aids better than others?

Hey CMC,

I have to agree with Flashfly... I could have saved some time 6 months ago if the topic was fleshed out. I had to do a comparison for my office of for NetG, SkillSoft & Element K. After we found out that SkillSoft was acquiring NetG, we pulled back to just Element K & Skillsoft. He's a clip out of the comparison sheet I did for my boss. You can tell I had decided on SkillSoft when I presented it.

Element K
Strengths
• Mix of e-learning content, print courseware and customer.
• Lots of IT courses.
• Development partner to Adobe, Macromedia, IBM, Novell, Cisco and Microsoft.
• Has long standing MacIntosh support.
• Now moving more towards custom solutions.

How SkillSoft compares in relation to
• Larger selection in Business Skills, ES&H and Legal compliance. Courses are longer and seem more in depth. (EK's catalogue lists the majority of their courses as only 1 hr in length)
• Greater IT certification coverage (more exams, mentoring & Expert Certs)
• Larger Books Referenceware section
• Greater courseware & technical support (24x7, 365 day a year with 4 times the available staff)
• Course accreditation – ACE credits, Drexel University, University of Phoenix & Continuing EDU credits

I liked the Element K product, and I think in an IT centric world, it would work well. But depth and variety of courses with SkillSoft was greater. I liked the interactivity more in SkillSoft too, but that can be a personal preference. I liked the look for the courses too, but my guy also told me they've been upgrading them, so I'm not sure how they compare to what they were like before. If you want I still have links to demo's and course catalogues from both if you're interested.