Blackboard vs Moodle

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Permalink Reply by Katie Christo on February 18, 2009 at 12:12am

I used Moodle in my last district and have done a little with Blackboard in my current school. I have to say I like the feel of Moodle better. Moodle was much more intuitive for me than Blackboard.

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Permalink Reply by Katrina Keene on February 18, 2009 at 7:54am

Katie Christo said:

I used Moodle in my last district and have done a little with Blackboard in my current school. I have to say I like the feel of Moodle better. Moodle was much more intuitive for me than Blackboard.

Thank you SO much for your reply!!!
Katrina

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Permalink Reply by Brian Oestreich on February 19, 2009 at 9:46am

Moodle has been designed for education by educator folks. Not too fancy. Has a few foibles, can live with them considering the price is zero for the software.

Blackboard has become quite expensive over the years and is now the 800 pound gorilla trying to be everything for everyone in trying to justify the costs. Features are sometimes not intuitive to find any more.

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Permalink Reply by Hamud Ali on February 25, 2009 at 9:05am

Hi,
I am in Qatar University and for the last 3 years we started using Blackboard. While it is not perfect, I think it is really good. Off course they are releasing new vesrions every so often. The latest version 8 has better gradebook interface.

I haven't used moodle.

Regards
Hamud

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Permalink Reply by Bill Connaghan on February 26, 2009 at 11:44am

I've used both.

Blackboard is an enterprise LMS, that means $$

Moodle is not as intuitive and easliy navigated (my opinion). Yes it is a lower cost, but even though software is free, it does come with costs internally to the organization in terms of time to setup, configure, upgrade and maintain at a 99.9% uptime. The support network is poor unless you buy a service contract or have it hosted for you.

If you are investigating LMS's you also might want to check out these enterprise products.

http://www.studywiz.com/ (priced at lower enterprise range) excellent features and navigation
http://www.angellearning.com/ (blackboard price range) excellent features and navigation

If money is not a problem, I personally would use angel learning or studywiz

Bill

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Permalink Reply by Cynthia Sisson on February 26, 2009 at 12:53pm

When blackboard got too expensive, my institution switched to Moodle. I can live with both of them, and at this point think that Moodle is a better choice for my institution because of Bb's cost.

The Gradebook in Moodle is clunky and takes getting used to. Otherwise, I've found it to be more flexible and useful for my purposes.

Blackboard is commercial, so in some ways it's a much nicer / cleaner / smoother product, but it was also much more rigid (as I remember) than Moodle is. You did it the Blackboard way or you didn't do it.

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Permalink Reply by Corey Gin on February 27, 2009 at 11:20pm

I've done extensive work as a teacher, administrator, and researcher using many different learning management systems including Moodle and BlackBoard. When it comes down to it, they both are able to serve a variety of teaching and learning needs. BlackBoard's upcoming product, BlackBoard NG, looks very impressive. Compared to Moodle, it is much more richer in terms of the design and the tools/resources that are available. Functionality and scalability are important for supporting a large organization with the appropriate tools.

On the flip side, Moodle is a good product, particularly if you are looking for a solid open source LMS. I see the functionality growing over time. Probably not as fast as BlackBoard's products, but still worth the investment in time when budget is an issue. Of course, being open source, you are at the mercy of others if you need additional functionality and services addressed and installed.

Corey

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Permalink Reply by Linda Jones on February 28, 2009 at 10:59am

I am new to Moodle this year after being a faithful Blackboard user for many years. We switched to Moodle as the platform to teach educators how to develop online course sites due to the cost of Blackboard.

The initial use of Moodle was frustrating due to the layout which is very different from Blackboard. For a free tool I would recommend it especally if your institution is new to the online environment. There is not a lot of tech support/help out there unless your site is hosted by some else.

Our biggest problem now deals with participants unable to access pdfs, word documents etc. that we place on Moodle. This is due to incapatabilities issues with software.

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Permalink Reply by Michelle Kuhns on March 1, 2009 at 3:29am

Hi Katrina,
Our school uses Moodle and has had great success with it. The students are seasoned Moodle-users and our teachers have found it to be a great way to manage the electronic components of their classroom. It has also become the main communication tool for our administration. Professional development opportunities are listed there, forms are accessed, and each principal has a course that they use to update teachers on the week ahead or host forum discussions about topics affecting the school. It's been pretty powerful.

One frustration that teachers have shared is the overabundance of sign-ons that they feel they have to do each morning... Moodle, Google, Groupwise.... etc. The good news is that Google Apps has just combined their efforts with Moodle and will be accessible through a single sign-on to Moodle. This is pretty exciting for us.

Here is a blurb about the integration of the two from moodle.org (login required):
Moodle-GoogleApps Integration

Moodlerooms and Google have worked together to build a state of the art
integration. The 1.0 version of the integration provides:

1. Moodle users are automatically created in Google Apps (Google Docs,
Calendar, and Gmail).

2. When you log in to Moodle, you are automatically logged in to Google
Apps.

3. A Gmail block in Moodle displays your latest Gmail messages when you
login to the Moodle Front Page.

4. A Google Apps block on the Moodle Front Page displays links to your
Google Start Page, Google Docs, Google Calendar and Gmail.

5. A Google Widget shows a link to Moodle on the Google side.

Here's an article that gives an overview: http://www.thejournal.com/articles/24010/

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Permalink Reply by Fatenah Issa on March 4, 2009 at 8:02am

Katrina,

Thanks for bringing up this topic. I'm currently using Blackboard for graduate coursework but my company is currently investingating Moodle.

Fatenah

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Permalink Reply by Nancy Cook on March 8, 2009 at 12:12pm

I recently learned to use Moodle in a K-12 setting, and I have used Blackboard for many years in two different higher ed institutes. Since I took a course in Moodle, the world of possibilities of setting up more online resources for my students has opened up to me. It helped me explore additional features in Blackboard that I didn't know existed. I would highly recommend Moodle for any educator. I feel there are more options and it is more user friendly than Blackboard. (It may be that my perception is skewed because I had instruction with Moodle and had to figure out Blackboard for myself.)

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Permalink Reply by Tasi Young on March 14, 2009 at 10:07pm

Where did you take the course for Moodle?

Nancy Cook said:

I recently learned to use Moodle in a K-12 setting, and I have used Blackboard for many years in two different higher ed institutes. Since I took a course in Moodle, the world of possibilities of setting up more online resources for my students has opened up to me. It helped me explore additional features in Blackboard that I didn't know existed. I would highly recommend Moodle for any educator. I feel there are more options and it is more user friendly than Blackboard. (It may be that my perception is skewed because I had instruction with Moodle and had to figure out Blackboard for myself.)

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