Last month we sought your opinion on the eLearning courses of Skillsoft to find out if they fit your needs. Founded in the late 1980's in Ireland, Skillsoft first emerged as a provider of IT and business skills eLearning. The company has expanded it's offerings over the years and now boasts more than 13 million users and a variety of specialized learning content. Nonetheless our survey respondents gave them the lowest user satisfaction score to date. Many noted the breath of the course catalog as an advantage, while others found pricing and quality of the content to be troublesome. We've reviewed the feedback and as our exclusive "Satisfaction Meter" indicates, the overall Satisfaction Index of -7 suggests that Skillsoft leaves some users wanting more.
Skillsoft received an average rating of 6.8 from respondents when asked the likelihood of recommending to a friend, where 0 is "not at all likely" and 10 is "extremely likely". 30% of respondents gave a rating of 9 or 10. While 37% gave a rating between 0 and 6.
Overall people indicated the broad selection of courses as a major advantage of Skillsoft eLearning courses. Many noted that the general layout is relatively easy to understand. A few of the comments we received: "Breadth of offerings; responsiveness of account team; frequency of content updates and additions; L&D expertise they make available to us." "I liked the variety of business courses offered, the straight-forward lessons, well-organized information, and fun scenarios. They used good actors/models in their scenarios. The courses I remember the most addressed communication skills, teamwork, negotiation, presentation skills, etc." "A robust course catalog. Good and easy system to use."
When asked what users didn't like about the software, some had issues with the integration of the learning content and organization of the course catalog. Some respondents noted the price as an obstacle, while still others found the quality of the courses to be inferior.
"They need to implement some of their acquisitions into their over all curriculum at a faster pace. They also need to become more adept at delivering mobile content, not desktop content." "Course Catalog can be overwhelming and confusing. Administration of the system is very manual, cant create interfaces." "Course numbering/titling; cost seems high for what you get; some performance issues when using dial-up."
The majority of those who commented said they used Skillsoft primarily for IT or business related professional development or other internal training purposes. "[Use Skillsoft] only for IT courses - soft skill courses seem to be developed by people who are not experts in their field and for the price, it might be better to take a free MOOC course" "When there is a need for content that aligns with their offerings. Using their content means we get their LMS as part of the service. It is sufficient for our needs" "If someone needs content and an LMS but is unable to spend enough for both - buy the content from SkillSoft and use their LMS"
The User Satisfaction Index measures overall user satisfaction based on survey responses. The User Satisfaction Index ranges from -100 to 100, where -100 represents total user dissatisfaction and 100 represents total user satisfaction. A User Satisfaction Index of 0 represents neutral or split user satisfaction. The User Satisfaction Index is calculated by taking the percentage of survey responses with a "9" or "10" and subtracting the percentage of survey responses with a "6" or less.