What LMS do you prefer?

Our school is evaluating 3 LMS's to replace our current one (Angel). We are looking at Blackboard, Moodle, and Canvas. I'd like to hear from people using any of these and would particularly like to know what you like/don't like about it.

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Permalink Reply by Zach Vander Veen on September 7, 2011 at 11:12am

This is a bit of a loaded question - but I'm happy to take a stab! My experience is with Blackboard, Moodle, and Sakai. I haven't had time to explore Canvas.

I think Blackboard and Moodle both suffer from ease of use. There's something very 1990s about them (even their newest versions). I sometimes long for Google or Apple to get their hands wet in the LMS market in order to show how it could be done (Google Apps is sort of 1/2 way towards an LMS). Too many clicks and features for everything (feature creep).

So having said that, I prefer Moodle. Two main reasons:

It's cheaper. Way way way cheaper. My district saved somewhere of $100,000+ a year with switching from Bb to Moodle. Blackboard would need to provide a pretty compelling product in order to go against Moodle's cost. It doesn't.
Moodle is opensource. When the broken bits crop up (and there are always broken bits), you can usually fix things between visiting their forums and knowing a bit about the system. Bb - well - we were small potatoes for them. Who knew when they'd fix things. You can also customize your Moodle install (themes, modules, etc) easier than in Bb.

As far as features - they basically have the same features. So why pay the money? Anecdotally I've found teachers grasp how Moodle works easier (you either add a resource or an activity) - but they both take some serious training.

FWIW (and as context), our district uses Moodle to run Companion Courses for every teacher grades 6-12, a number of hybrid courses, and a few pure online courses (ie health, Spanish, Mandarin).

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Permalink Reply by Mary Kate Tworek on September 7, 2011 at 2:13pm

Thanks for the thoughtful answer, Zach. I am attending some presentations next week on campus of each of the 3 LMS's under consideration. I feel better prepared now to ask questions. You say you prefer Moodle and ask "why pay the money" for Blackboard when Moodle is "way cheaper". But what are we getting for the money we pay for Blackboard? Will we have to hire more programmers to support the opensource Moodle?

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Permalink Reply by Colleen Young on September 8, 2011 at 12:47pm

I only have experience of Moodle - but it works for us. I agree with the post above - training is required - it's not that intuitive for the less experienced. I am frequently asked how to upload files etc.

In case it is helpful I put these Moodle links together for our staff;

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Permalink Reply by Zach Vander Veen on September 8, 2011 at 7:06pm

Frankly, you're not getting much for the money spent on Bb.

If your district feels more comfortable having high end support for an LMS, there are Moodle providers like Moodle Rooms and Remote Learner. They're still a deal in comparison to Blackboard.

Or if you're on more of a budget, find that teacher (or parent...or student) in your district who knows a bit of php (that person who runs Wordpress installations as a side business) and offer to pay them $30 an hour to fix the occasional glitches that crop up. You'll still save considerably more money.

As some context, I should mention that the glitches could very well be minor. I've been running Moodle on district servers since 2005. I've never had anything so major that we've needed to hire outside help. I'm self-taught on the system and have managed to keep things operational for 6 years (for 3 of those years I was full time teaching too!). Moodle is a very well documented OS software - and it has a very robust community willing to help out with any given problem.

That said, it's not free. We spent around $20,000 for high end servers to run our installation (but those servers are expected to hold us over for 5 years...Bb was going to cost us ~$100,000 per year). Part of my salary goes towards maintaining it.

Again, still much, much cheaper.

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