Moodle

Blackboard like interface, simple and powerful. Love it.

I absolutely don’t see how Moodle can be rated THAT high. It’s anything but super powerful. I tried it for my coaching program and was quite bummed that it doesn’t have a video chat or anything of this kind. I had to create a separate youtube channel and run workshops from there. The design is not too impressive as well, if that matters for you of course (which was my case).

I've been teaching with Moodle for two and a half years now and don't know what I used to do beforehand. It is a very powerful suite of tools for teaching, and the advent of Moodle 2 (despite having some changes that through a bit of doubt and confusion into the Moodle community, at least initially) has lifted it another notch. It is compatible with a number of other major pedagogical tools such as SCORM. It allows you to organise your units of work, present them in logical and attractive ways, embed multimedia, and keep tabs of student completion and marks. It also allows students and teachers to interact via forums and chat rooms, and for students to create their own bodies of information using tools such as the built-in wiki. This is far more than simply a data repository (as I have seen some argue of Moodle). It is a fully fledged, fully featured teaching machine that is being taken up by increasing numbers of primary, secondary and tertiary teaching institutions across the globe. And not just because it's free. Do yourself a favour and really check this out. Don't let the price full you. This baby sings!

In early 2001, I tried Evaluation Copy of WebCT, but after looking at the price, I just cannot believe. Then I came to know to Manhattan VC. I have used it for two years. But I face difficulties since I and my net admin could not understand the database that support it. Next, as I looked at the Edutools site, I got to know ATutor and Moodle. I downloaded them and I was happy that the two of them use opensource database server, PHP and run on Apache. As I and my coleagues looked at these two, we decided to use Moodle since its programming scripts that are relatively easy to follow its logic. We used Moodle since its version 1.3. We managed to add some more features on it to integrate Moodle with our students records system. Right now still use Moodle in its latest version 1.5.2. If you are interested please visit http://student.ut.ac.id/. I hope you will joint us in Moodleing.

I've been using Moodle for a few months now. The rest of my University uses Blackboard (which costs them a great deal of money). I was not happy with BB as it is really only a content management system (buy a filing cabinet, it's cheaper). I came across Moodle by accident. I have no computing background but I have managed to create my own moodle server from an old G3 iMac in my office, install moodle and start creating quality content. All this was possible due to the intuitive nature of Moodle and the generous (and free) help of the Moodle community. My personal opinion is that Moodle is superior to BB for the kind of teaching that I do. Don't take my word for it, try it out. You have nothing to lose.

I have used Moodle for three years as a teacher with no programming experience. It was simple to set up my own server using the excellent installation documentation. Questions were answered on the free service forums in hours, not days. Although I use it for smoothly for 150 simultaneous students, Moodle is scalable to over 30,000 learners. In version 1.5, you will find a much improved quiz module, faster chat, customizable themes, more standards-compliancy, instant messaging, flexible blocks--all in 60+ languages. It is so easy to expand, I have 5 student programmers making a new module at my school for handling projects. Because it is open source, this module will be freely available to all schools along with Moodle which will always be free. The best part is the interface, which is intuitive for teachers and fun for students. All user comparison studies point to Moodle as superior to Blackboard and WebCT, except in price.

Despite the comments of some anonomous reviewers, Moodle is quite flexible and powerful. I know of at least one state university that is using it as their on-line platform in preference to Blackboard just based on its capabilities. I've examined it enough that I'm moving our existing on-line training courses to it.

Regarding the below author's claim that Moodle is less flexible than Blackboard, please see the recent Blackboard vs. Moodle study. http://www.humboldt.edu/~jdv1/moodle/all.htm In this case the authors taught the same class in Blackboard and Moodle 1.3.2, it was 'standard' (eg not 'social contructivist') type of undergraduate course. The Blacboard version won Blackboard's international competition (BBionic) prize, by the way. Moodle actually is more flexible regarding pedagogy than Blackboard as it has a number of standard and optional teaching tools BB lacks. The sequential (or branching) learning lesson module, for instance, goes well beyond anything available in BB. 1.5 has improved SCORM support, adds AICC, and integrations with IMS/QTI, LD and LAMS are underway. O and it runs real well on a Mac server, can Blackboard do that:-).

I will add to the previous comment that Moodle does not support decimal grades AT ALL. You can't enter a grade of 95.5, for example. In addition, FORGET using Moodle on a class that has a 1000 point scale. Can you imagine the pulldown menu on a 300 point exam?

  The grading system in Moodle is archaic. (for example, pull down menus for grade entry, rather than a text box). If you have a large number of students in a course, this system bogs you down quickly. In addition, Moodle doesn't have support for extra credit, if you make use of that in your class. Moodle was designed to be used with a certain "style" of teaching called "social constructionist pedagogy" and is therefore not as flexible as Blackboard. The author seems to like it this way and is not keen to add features that would be useful to people with other teaching styles. Read the author's web site here: http://moodle.org/doc/?frame=philosophy.html If your teaching style matches this, you will be very happy with this software. If you use a more traditional teaching style, you are likely to be frustrated. On the other hand, Moodle is free, and probably your best option if your school doesn't support Blackboard.

From an end user perspective, MOODLE 1.21 is on par with Blackboard 6 (which I have personally used for 5 online courses). From an installation perspective, MOODLE is probably easier than any product like it on the market. Geek rating of 3 out of 10. From a support perspective, MOODLE is just a little easier to maintain than WebCT Vista. From a customization perspective, MOODLE's opensource license allows freedoms that are specifically curtailed by the commercial CMSs. In terms of value, there is no contest. The price per month for our small institution from Blackboard equalled half the education pricing for a new server from Apple to host MOODLE. Let me repeat: $ of 2 months of Blackboard = $ of G5 + MOODLE(unlimited months). Wake Up People!

The last reviewer has been looking at an old version - almost all these shortcomings have been addressed in Moodle 1.2.1 and Moodle continues to evolve rapidly. Some very large Universities are already using Moodle exclusively on moderate hardware without performance issues. Also, it's important to mention that Moodle is a *free* product (many of the competitors charge many thousands of dollars per year in licensing fees).

I honestly can't see why so many people are making a fuss over moodle. It looks pretty on the outside, but when you dig a little deeper (i.e. actually start using it to run a course), it becomes obvious that it is missing many, many, features found in more fully developed course management systems. For example, the chat capability is basically a CGI program that has the web browser constantly refresh itself to update your view of the chat. As another example, you can only issue the one or two built-in surveys that come with the software - you cannot develop your own. And, last I looked, you can't attach files to forum messages!!! No concept of combining students into groups... and so on... On top of everything else, as a PHP/MySQL CGI program, Moodle is very sluggish on all but the most high-end systems. If you wade through the very active list at the moodle site, you'll find that most people are looking for help getting the thing running adequately on their systems. Overall, Moodle is not ready for prime time, although the author deserves an A+ for agressively marketing Moodle and himself. Very nice logo, and you can buy T-shirts and coffee cups!

I have used Moodle for a year and a half. I started offering it to the rest of my department this fall and they love it. The author was a distance learner himself and understands what is needed and what is not. It accomodates a variety of teaching styles, levels of interactivity, and methods of evaluation.

Very cool. I've tried a couple other packages like this but this one is the cleanest and the best. And it's free! It's got a better layout and more features than the commercial LMS we use at my University!