Blackboard Learn by Anthology vs. Moodle

A school with a well-established technology imprint with their students (for example, ours is a BYOB school where every student has their own laptop and must bring it to school every day and where over 99% of our families have reliable broadband at home) is a reasonable scenario for using The arrogance and intransigence of the sales force is quite disconcerting… They are no longer the only game in town and don't yet realize it. Less well-off schools/families may find it a challenge if students must be on campus or at a public library in order to use the technology. Obviously, during the pandemic, this became problematic for some districts.

Incentivized

Moodle is a Learning Management System and is best suited for just that. We didn't like the assessment piece of our full scale Learning Management System (nor did we want to purchase the entire assessment module) so we chose to use Moodle for this, and it works well. Installing this application with the intention of only using a portion of its capabilities can be successful in environments where you have technical skills and a broad understanding of integration between your systems. For institutions that lack these, you're better suited to using a full scale of an LMS with assessment inside that same application.

Incentivized

• Provides HTML quality course content that is easily retrievable and viewable.
• Provides multiple methods of communication: email, threaded discussions, real-time "live" online discussions, as well as grade portal.
• Allows facilitators multiple methods of grading or providing feedback: threaded discussions, rubric scoring, personal comments, inline viewer, or download/upload attachments.

Incentivized

• Moodle's grade book works well. Assignments are integrated so the grades are recorded automatically.
• Moodle is customizable by administrators, so our version only gives us the options we need. NO Clutter.
• The discussion board offers several options for instructors that help with grading. I use "sum of points", but there are other options as well.

Incentivized

• Although the current graphic user interface is easy to use, it can be improved with larger fonts, dynamic menus, and attractive graphics.
• The system does not include a module to pay the school fee.
• The roster tab lacks detailed information about students.

Incentivized

• Rubric Management. This may have been addressed in a plugin module.
• Better tools for examining outcomes from exams and rubrics across a class, course, or organization. This may have been addressed in a plugin module.
• Improved content management within the default installation. While there are modules that support products such as Drupal, building into the default product would ease adoption.

Incentivized

There are several aspects of Desire2Learn that outweigh the benefits of using Blackboard. I find that the Desire2Learn system is a bit more user friendly and looks more up-to-date. However, the decision to renew systems is not up to me because the entire University uses the same system. Regardless, I think I would choose Desire2Learn over Blackboard because of its improved user interface.

We use it because it is what have committed to back in 2011. Perhaps Moodle will evolve and advance in a positive way that will alleviate most of our user-based gripes? Perhaps it will not appear to be as cost effective given the need for a certain level of engineering and support staff to maintain it at a future level of sustainability? It's hard to say. As an enterprise scale critical application, we like it, but don't love it. Our instructors don't particularly like it at all.

It is very usable for both faculty and students. The interface is pretty intuitive and most students can use it without a lot of additional training. Faculty do need some training to effectively use the interface, but they usually get it pretty quickly. We have had to create some additional programming to give faculty a way to delve deeper into the content.

I've been able to figure out Moodle through my own experimentation and some help from the Moodle support pages. It's not always obvious where to make certain some changes and It can be a little confusing in determining which pages blocks will appear. If this is your first time using Moodle as an admin/course designer you should expect to spend a some time experimenting because knowing where to make certain changes isn't always intuitive. Additionally, plan to explore the course as a student vs. as admin because the UI is different based upon your settings

Incentivized

I have worked in Moodle for over 10 years in two different organizations, and I have never experienced an outage. We have about 600 courses in our current account and the only outage we have had is FlashChat add-in we use for live chats, within Moodle, hence the reason for the nine (9). If you all know of Moodle vendors willing to help us upgrade from 1.9, Please wend me their info.

Incentivized

Moodle is an excellent LMS in relationship to any other one that I have seen or used. The pages load quickly and the reports complete in a reasonable time frame. Moodle has taken on Respondus, StudyMate, BigBlueButton, Turning Tech, Turnitin2, Certificates, Attendance, Tegrity, Questionnaire, Virtual Programming Lab, and Badges. All of these programs work right in with Moodle and do not cause any issues. Instructors may also use Camtasia and Snagit software as well as using webcams, downloading videos from the Internet, adding into books, or any of the many other areas within Moodle. Our instructors use the grade books without many problems and really don't ask questions much anymore. We upgrade Moodle every semester and are currently on 2.9+. Our instructors have basically learned to use most of the resources and activities.

Incentivized

Itʻs a good platform for certain things such as tests. Blackboard may not be the most user friendly but there is always room for improvement in any website, business, etc. When used with other platforms such as Google Classroom, Blackboard can be more effective, but when used by itself I feel it is not as impactful from a student perspective.

I can consider Moodle as one of the pioneer in providing online learning. Before the introduction of other Learning Management Software, Moodle has been in place already in the field of education and so I believe that Moodle is definitely one of a kind software that all teachers should try and utilize in making sure that the online learning is a good experience.

Incentivized

I have used a few sites and they were adequate but my best learning experience was face to face and hands on.

Incentivized

Blackboard's Managed Hosting was top-notch in getting us up and running quickly.

Incentivized

Find a partner who will work with you during the implementation process. Be sure to provide ample training for veteran users on the changes and for newbies on the overall product.

Incentivized

Blackboard is the all around better fit for our intuition. It provides the "bells and whistles" we require in having a diverse faculty and flexibility in course delivery. The "bells and whistles" aren't cheap, but we have found that budgeting for this large expense has been more than worth it for us.

Incentivized

Moodle, being open source, is the foundation a lot of other tools like it are based on. It provides almost all of the same functionality and feature set as Google Classtoom, Canvas, etc., although those products are a bit more polished. All can do content delivery, progress tracking, attendance, reporting, etc. with ease, but Moodle also does this as a completely open source product that can be code-reviewed, audited, modified, extended, etc. at will, provided the expertise is present.

Well, I administer Moodle for a dozen of our divisions and there is a wide range of flexibility between offerings. I have course instructors who use every module i their course, chock full of videos, pictures, links to web tools for synchronous sessions within the asynchronous course. I also have others who are content with a syllabus, a few pdfs, links to podcast lectures and a few simple assignments. No matter if your organization is big or small, or if your requirements are strict for credentialing or non-existent (for internal know-how), Moodle can accommodate you.

Incentivized

• It has answered all my needs for distance learning and met most of the objectives
• The only negative I can think of is not having access to the past course material and not being able to download the lectures
• Another positive is the zoom integration feature

Incentivized

• Moodle has allowed the business to track all training initiatives. Since, November 2014 we have loaded 54 courses, 339 users, 889 resources, issued 719 badges, and created over 100 course modules.
• Our company just got a new applicant tracking system for the recruiters to use. In order to get all of the employees up to speed we created trainings that we loaded into Moodle. The participants and participation was tracked and we were able to find correlations between users engaged in training and their activity in the new applicant tracking system. This is a significant win for the training department, our learners, our company, and especially Moodle.
• Moodle also provides great customer service for our internal employees. They now have one place to go to find all their resources, all their training, and all the help they need for any training questions. Instead of scattering information on the intranet. Training is more official when it has its own domain.

Incentivized