ECDL ATS providers litmus/activ/third force

[dunkydonut]

Hello all,

I need a little help and wondered if you could. I'm looking at ECDL providers and could do with feedback from people.

I like litmus learning, they are In application and have unlimited practice tests, all the costs are much of a muchness between them and other providers such as activ/third force.

I would really like to hear from people who use these providers to give me some feedback. Did they look after you after the sale..... whats tech support like etc etc.

This is my first big project at work and want to get it right!

Many thanks
DD

[pete]

We're just introducing Activ here. We looked at two providers and Activ got the contract because the testing interface was a working emulation of the program, rather than a region-based flash animation. So far, my opinion of them is mixed.

Good:
From a "does the software work without daftness" perspective, they're good (as far as we've used it).
Customer support is helpful.

Not-so-good:
They say "we have an msi for distributing the client" when they actually mean, "we have a zip file named in a manner that might suggest an msi resides within, but is actually two batch scripts and a setup.exe.
Documentation (that I could find) on automating the client config and pointing clients at a central repository was sparse.

[dunkydonut]

I've been looking into litmus more this morning, and it appears that they are actually "in application" so that the test actually runs in Word/excel/access etc.
This looks like a really good option for my students...... again would be interested in hearing anything else re litmus that anyone has to offer

[powdarrmonkey]

Litmus is indeed in application and works very, very well. Support is good although they have had some short downtime recently, that has given a couple of classes problems, but not more than an hour or so.

[plexer]

We use thirdforce as a hosted version.

We just found that for whatever reason the testing side of things didn't through the LEA internet connection so that messed that up.

Ben

[dunkydonut]

Do you mean "didn't run through the LEA system"? ie you couldn't get any of the other systems to work? did you try them before you bought then?

DD

[andyturpie]

We have had nothing but issues with Thirdforce on an RM network through the grid. We have had girls tests looping around back to question 1 also authorware dissapearing at random of machines, probably to do with package updates to flash 10.x

Girls and teachers are completely hacked off with it. Might need to look into litmus and activ though.

[mjgreen]

Just to put my 2pence worth in..


..we were with Litmus, but found so many problems with the fact that thier stuff is 'in application'. Others people see it as a benifit, but our system if pretty well locked down and we ended up with A LOT of permission problems etc.

It also seemed to crash alot and we found thier support to be very poor.

We moved over to active about 6 months ago and generally we are pleased. I personally like the administration system and the emulation feel of the software. The system is not perfect by a long way and i feel that the software could be improved as we do still get the occasional problem with it.

They do have the occasional 'content' problem though. For example if there are 3 ways to do a task in Excel, all 3 might not work on the emulation. This throws some people as they think the system is not working correctly.

Activ's support is pretty decent though, will normally get a reply to an email query within 24hrs and they are also good helping on the phone.

The only problem really is the lack of the unlimited practise tests like we had on Litmus. The teachers really want this feature but Activ dont do it.

[TheWanderer]

I will add a little more to this!

I have had very bad experience with Litmus Learning Ltd, I would not even entertain using their software. I felt that the Business Manager was usless and was talking to us like we was dirt not impressed. Support was very good 6-12 months ago however now it seems to be non existant. I believe the support guys have left. I will be looking at Active in future.

[powdarrmonkey]

I believe the support guys have left.

Please back up that assertion. What gives you reason to believe this?