Talking about Learning Management System (LMS) or Content Management System (CMS) in higher education is a bit of a hit in a glass wall. You see where you want to go but for some reason you can’t reach a common point.
Many popular LMS / CMS today offer what it seems to be a similar gamut of features and tools. EduTools does a great job by letting you select which LMS vendor you’d like to compare and finally produces a comparison spreadsheet http://www.edutools.info/provider_list.jsp?pj=8.
The Instructional Technology Council (ITC) published a survey on elearning at Community Colleges page demonstrating WebCT and Blackboard still leading stats in LMS costumers in 2007.
There are two levels of expectations that I believe at some point they coincide but at many other instances they grow apart greatly.
Faculty = non-tech savvies expect simplicity; more experienced online members expect a greater range of possibilities; some others just need a usable gradebook and better tools to “control” their students’ performance.
Institutional = assessment numbers that bring great stats, a good support plan in case of external hosting (including ticket responses of 1 hr max)…
In-home Technical Team = power of influence on the vendor’s development team and a easy to use course migration tool. Among others…
Greeks and trojans are hard to please at the same time. However, at this point, is it worth to ask: what is it really that we look for in an LMS? what is minimal requirement?
![[a snapshot of] Comparison of Angel, Blackboard and Moodle](http://juliaitani.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/angelblackboardmoodle_lmscomparison.jpg "angelblackboardmoodle_lmscomparison")
I worked on comparing Angel, Blackboard and Moodle. There are many ways to look at LMS’s whether through the eyes of a programmer, developer, faculty, instructional designer, student and so forth.
I looked at it under a mix of three perspectives: a course developer who has four years of experience with instructional design, and that seeks to support faculty’s work with their online courses by meeting their needs – needs only and not so much on wishes. Because we wish many things but keeping it suitable to our needs is reasonable – and usable.
I came up with this comparison grid. This only reflects a personal experience with each LMS. It’s not official, and I’ve never been hired for doing this type of comparison. Here’s the PDF >> angelblackboardmoodle_lmscomparison
I’m currently working on a new comparison spreadsheet putting Moodle, Sakai, Blackboard, Desire2Learn and Epsilen.
As usual, Pearson is the most difficult to get demo accounts and so I gave up on them.
Thanks for the tip, I was just visiting the blog and I can add nothing to your design. I like the layout very well, yes and there is no information missing. I am curious what soon will be published here.
Thanks for this! Very helpful info.
Great post. It’s especially important to ID various audiences and objectives. In the interest of full disclosure, I work with the makers of Haiku LMS. I’d love to see that system on your next comparison sheet.
Curious to know if you have an ETA for the next round of the comparison spreadsheet that would include Sakai. I found what you posted to be very useful.
Larry, great question! And thank you for your comment. I wish I could give you a proximate date but the thing is at this point I don’t have any demo account to any Sakai version.
Much appreciated for what you have done so far!!
Since you are saying,
“I’m currently working on a new comparison spreadsheet putting Moodle, Sakai, Blackboard, Desire2Learn and Epsilen.”
would you let me know when I can get an access to the comparison sheet?
All the best,
Jules
I must say that I was baffled by the following statement in your study:
GUI is very user-friendly, lookand-
feel is pleasantly visual. So
far faculty has been keen
towards this interface.
Having used Angel since January of this year I am growing increasingly frustrated with the GUI and the navigability… Maybe we use different platforms and yet I am pretty computer savvy… I have spent countless hours creating content only to find issues once I tried using it and then having to recreate it again… There are also many glitches that create countless problems!
Interesting comparisons – the university I work for had Blackboard for years prior to my arrival as new faculty. Up until then I had only used SharePoint, so I thought Blackboard was a tremendously useful update. Then Bb raised their fees substantially forcing the university to re-look other alternatives. I proposed Angel and Moodle because I had read something about them being opensource and thus free. As happens in a public institution, by the time the approval process was navigated and training/familiarity sessions were underway the selected LMS – Angel – had commercialized itself. Nonetheless, the package with the training and support was still only a fraction of what Bb was demanding, so Angel was adopted. Anyone who has paid any attention to the wave of Bb acquisitions knows that Angel fell and was purchased by Bb. To their credit Bb agreed to honor the existing contract and did not raise their rates…until last month. Now we are, again, looking for an inexpensive LMS and are inquiring into Moodle, D2L, Sakai and others. Thus I found your comparison analysis of interest.
My institution uses both Blackboard 9.1 and Moodle 1.9 and my area provides faculty training and support. The only reason I would recommend using Moodle instead of Bb is if it’s all you can afford. Moodle is nowhere near Bb in features, usability, dependability and it’s grade book is a complete nightmare to use, regardless of what Moodle.org says it will allow you to do. There is no meaningful documentation and most faculty who use Moodle tell their students to just ignore the points total…that it’s always wrong. Just sayin’…
Elle, I agree with you and to bring this discussion further let me add a couple of notes to your comment. Today, 2012, the LMS market has evolved. In 2009, the LMS at hand were limited and, unlike Blackboard, Moodle has not improved much. When using the grade book, Blackboard 9.1 is far more robust than Moodle. The problem with Moodle is that it requires a lot of customization which implies a need for resources. If an institution has those resources then Moodle can be a great tool to use. Blackboard already offers those perks. It is the question of… would you like to buy an Apple (that has great features and customer service) or build your own machine? It can be cheaper but it’ll take you a lot of work to make it the way you want it to be.