DigitalChalk, by Sciolytix vs. Frontline Professional Growth

As I've stated, the best scenario for an organization to use DigitalChalk is in a highly structured course delivery format where information does not change often, where the course doesn't need any hands-on facilitating, and the outcomes can be automatically assessed. For certificate courses, DigitalChalk has everything the organization needs to implement their courses and certificate delivery.

Incentivized

Frontline Professional Growth allows a teacher/educational specialist to organize and keep track of all the parts of their yearly evaluation (observations, SGOs, documentation log, Professional Development Plan), and Professional Development Workshops. Our district has been able to adjust the use of Frontline Professional Growth to fit our Professional Development goals as well as our evaluation systems. Frontline Professional Growth also has a Forms section so we have all of our request forms in a paperless environment. Overall, the system does a good job of helping the teacher and supervisor/administration manage the evaluation and professional development requirements for our State.

Incentivized

• While I used the platform, it improved its integrations with PowerPoint, making it easy to convert slides to the DigitalChalk format.
• The editing layers for audio underneath the slides is very user-friendly and easy to use.
• While we didn't use the quiz randomization, I liked how there was a structure built to it so that those who had more robust usage situations than ours would be able to improve engagement and assess learning at a higher level.

Incentivized

• Provides professional learning opportunities to employees.
• Easy to track and navigate users.
• Professional development that is easy to access and convenient.

Incentivized

• The administration of Digital Chalk is very easy. The function I think may be missing is an easy way to add revisions and assign them to the students who need them. For example, when you update a piece of a course it would have an indication that it is version xxx and would ask who would like to assign it to - everyone who has taken it before or just new students.
• It would nice to have the system recognize when a student has already completed an element of a course that may be used in another course. For example, if video A is part of courses 1 and 2, and the student already watched it in course 1, it would ask the administrator if they should get automated credit for it in course 2, as well.

Incentivized

• The configuration and startup of Frontline Professional Growth is time-consuming. I wish this was easier to get going.
• Creating forms is difficult and the form editor is hard to navigate and use. You cannot create a form yourself. That has to be created and entered into your system by Frontline, which takes more time, especially if it is an easy form you want to create.
• There needs to be a better way to save forms you are completing and being able to go right back to them at a later date. I have had teachers lose what they were doing when saving a draft and then have to start all over.
• Notifications on forms at individual levels only go out once a day, sometime around 2am. This should be instantaneous, notifying individuals as the form comes in.

Incentivized

As I mentioned previously, Digital Chalk's customer support is excellent. I also got a reply back within an hour, and it was usually the same person. So, they were familiar with our needs and how we were using the system. Honestly, most of the time we had to contact their support, it was an issue on the user's side, not in the software. Yet, they still helped identify the issue and consulted on how to fix it.

Incentivized

Overall, Frontline Professional Growth manages observations, SGOs, documentation logs, and Professional Development Plans. In addition to these evaluation pieces, it allows our district to manage our Professional Development Workshops (in-house), Professional Development requests (for out-of-district), and many online request forms. The only real negative is that some of the menus are a bit cumbersome, and it takes several steps to get around the system.

Incentivized

I've worked with Cornerstone, Saba, SuccessFactors, and Blackboard. As an administrator, those systems are a beast to learn and require someone to spend a large portion of their time supporting them. Once you are their customer, their customer support is almost nonexistent. There are so many functions and settings that it's just overwhelming. By contrast, we had Digital Chalk up and running in a week with minimal issues. The administrative side is so much easier and doesn't require hours of involvement. The customer support is the best support I've ever had with any software, even outside of LMSs.

Incentivized

Frontline Professional Growth isn't an LMS. This is something more used on the back end to manage and track staff information regarding professional learning, workshops, and hours. This does a good job in a number of areas, but does have a learning curve and does take a good amount of time to get up and running. There are features that I wish were easier to use.

Incentivized

• Digital Chalk allowed us to move the vast majority of our leadership development training online. This allowed our field managers to spend more time on coaching and mentoring than delivering training. Previously, our field managers were having to spend 48-72 hours training, plus travel expenses.
• Many of our learners had prior negative experiences using online training. After switching to Digital Chalk our learning engagement increased over 100%. The vast majority of feedback receive is positive in regards to the software.

Incentivized

• Reduce lost paperwork.
• More efficient salary upgrades.

Incentivized